Mortal Taste (12 page)

She looked for a moment as if she would deny the possibility, then shook her head ruefully. ‘You're probably right. One or two people in the school probably twigged what was going on. Have they been talking about it?'

Lambert ignored that. Instead, he said, ‘Darcy Simpson seemed to know all about your affair.'

‘He did. He's obsessed with me.'

‘Despite what you did to him?'

‘Yes. If anything, it seemed to increase his hang-up. He was ditching me at the time, but he came out of hospital convinced I was the one for him. He said what I had done showed the depth of my passion. He took a job here when I moved to Cheltenham. He rings me up, sometimes three or four times a week. I've seen him following me in the town. I could have him for stalking, if I wanted to.'

‘But as you nearly killed him once, you won't, Miss Phillips. If Darcy Simpson knows about your affair with Peter Logan, be assured that other people will also know. You were very foolish to try to keep it from us.'

‘I accept that, now.' She looked suddenly very weary. ‘I followed my first instincts to keep our relationship secret. I'd been secretive for so long that I suppose it was a habit. Well, you know now, and I recognize that I was foolish. Is there anything else?'

‘Yes. Did you kill Peter Logan?'

Even Hook was surprised by the sudden aggression of the question. But Lambert had decided by now that sympathy was not the way to deal with Tamsin Phillips.

She looked furious for a moment. But all she said was a thin-lipped, ‘No. Of course I didn't.'

‘And have you any idea who did?'

‘No. I've thought of nothing else since we were given the news yesterday morning, but I haven't the faintest idea. I'd certainly tell you if I had.'

‘When did you last see Mr Logan?'

‘In school. On the Friday before he died.' Again she scarcely opened her mouth. It seemed as if each syllable had to be forced out.

‘And when were you last alone with him?'

A tiny pause. Her hands clasped and unclasped, but were perfectly still as she said, ‘On the Wednesday night before that. Five days before he died.'

Lambert's voice became softer, almost sympathetic for the first time, as he said, ‘Peter Logan was seen leaving the Birmingham University campus at ten to seven on Monday evening. We think he was back in Cheltenham by eight thirty at the latest. But Mrs Logan was not expecting him home until around eleven. Did he come to see you on the night he died?'

Her voice was very low as she responded to Lambert's quiet questioning. ‘No. I told you, the last time I saw him was during a normal school day on the Friday before he died.'

‘Then have you any idea where he intended to go on Monday night?' Lambert was almost apologetic in his tone, but both of them knew the importance of the question.

Several seconds seemed to pass before she said dully, ‘No. I knew he was at the conference on Monday. I thought he would be going straight home.'

‘It seems probable that he had arranged to meet someone that night. Someone who killed him. You can't even hazard a guess as to who that someone might be?'

‘No. Peter didn't say anything to me about a meeting.'

They left her staring hard at the blank wall of the little room.

Hook had driven the police Mondeo through the school gates and on to the road outside them before he said, ‘You went hard at her.'

‘Yes. She annoyed me, Bert, though that's no excuse. But perhaps the fact that she'd been dishonest to start with earned her a little harshness.'

Hook smiled. He had known men harsher, in his time. He'd known men who'd reduced witnesses to tears much faster than had happened today, without getting as much out of them as John Lambert did in quieter ways. He said, ‘She told us about her affair with Peter Logan readily enough, once you got to work on her. I'm beginning to get rather a different feeling about the private life of our late saintly headmaster.'

Lambert said nothing. He was wondering whether even now Tamsin Phillips had been wholly honest with them.

D
etective Sergeant Bert Hook made surprisingly good progress with Archie Weatherly, the seventy-year-old industrialist he was visiting because Weatherly was a governor of Greenwood Comprehensive School.

They were chalk and cheese these two, the consciously old-fashioned captain of industry and the slightly overweight CID man with his village bobby exterior. But Bert was a Barnardo's boy, who had met many wealthy patrons in his late adolescence in the home. He never minded being patronized by people like Weatherly. It put them off their guard, made them underestimate him, made them reveal things about themselves and other people which they didn't intend to reveal, sometimes didn't even realize they had revealed at all. Hook entered the huge office of the non-executive director of the building company and found himself brusquely directed to an upright chair in front of the big desk. He took it without irritation.

‘I thought they might have sent someone of higher rank than a sergeant to interview a man who'd been a governor since the school was set up,' grumbled Weatherly.

‘Big team. Fully deployed,' said Hook, gnomically but affably. ‘Still, I expect Superintendent Lambert will want to speak to you later, if you can point us towards the murderer.'

‘Can't do that. Can't really see why you want to speak to me anyway. I'm an industrialist, not a schooly.' Archie Weatherly dredged up a term from almost half a century earlier, when he had been a military man. He apparently saw no contradiction in the ideas that he had nothing to say but should nevertheless be interviewed by the top man in the case.

He now leaned forward confidentially towards Hook, smelling revoltingly of tobacco and aftershave, and said, ‘We're even getting murders in Cheltenham now. If you ask me, it's another example of this random violence that's taking the country over.'

DS Hook restrained the comment that he wasn't asking him. ‘There's been a lot of violence for a long time now, sir, even in Cheltenham. But very little of it is completely random. Most of it has a purpose, even if it's a criminal purpose.'

Weatherly frowned, then nodded slowly. ‘You think he was mugged, do you? Well these young buggers are running out of control all right. Need a touch of the birch, if you ask me.'

Bert didn't. ‘We're almost certain this wasn't a mugging, sir. Mr Logan's pockets didn't appear to have been touched. His death is much more likely to have been at the hands of someone who knew him.' Or someone hired by such a person: but Hook didn't want to trail such a complication across the brain processes of the man in front of him.

Weatherly slowly digested the thought that he might even have had contact with Logan's killer. He found it a surprisingly attractive idea. It brought a welcome excitement into what he was finding an increasingly dull life. ‘See whatcha mean, Sergeant. Rum do, this. So you want me to suggest who might have killed young Logan.'

‘We don't really expect that, sir. It would be remarkable if you could lead us straight to our killer.' More like bloody impossible, thought Bert. ‘This is just a routine inquiry really; we're getting in touch with anyone who had contact with the murder victim, in the days before he died. There is no suggestion, of course, that you might have killed Mr Logan yourself.'

Weatherly guffawed at the absurdity of such a notion.

‘But you might have noted some abnormality in the behaviour of the murder victim himself—'

‘No. Can't say I did. Young Logan was full of himself and his school at the governors' meeting last week – as usual. Not that he didn't have things to boast about, you understand. Greenwood seems to be doing very well – for a school in the state system, of course.'

‘—or some peculiarity in the attitude or actions of those around him,' concluded Bert Hook rather desperately.

Archie Weatherly digested this slowly, nodding as the full import of Hook's suggestion took root. For the first time since Hook had arrived in his office, he thought carefully. Like many a less exalted person, he felt the macabre glamour of that word murder, and wished to maintain a contact with the hunt, however tenuous. His brow furrowed, then lightened as a thought came to him. Bert Hook wished the criminal suspects he spent his life crossing swords with were as transparent as this ageing captain of industry. He prompted his man. ‘Any ideas you have will be treated in the strictest confidence, of course.'

‘Fenton. Stephen Fenton.'

Hook made a note of the name. When no further details emerged from the man behind the big desk, he said gently, ‘Is Mr Fenton a member of the school staff, sir? We have a team of—'

‘No, no, of course he isn't.' Weatherly shook his head as if he despaired of the modern police service. ‘He's a governor of Greenwood School, like me. He was the Chairman for a couple of years. Made quite a good job of it, I believe.'

‘And why would this give him a connection with the Headmaster's death?' asked Hook patiently.

Weatherly looked immensely conspiratorial. He leaned forward, though the size of his desk still kept him some eight feet away from Hook and made the movement a little ridiculous. ‘Spoke to him a few days ago. Told him he should become Chair of the Governors again. He turned me down flat!'

Weatherly sat back with the air of a man who has dropped a bombshell into a humdrum investigation. Hook waited for a moment to see whether the man would enlarge on Fenton's refusal, then said diffidently, ‘And you think this might have some significance, sir?'

‘Every significance, surely? Fellow turned me down flat on the phone. And I made it clear I could have fixed it for him.' He shook his head sadly; he was not used to men who turned down the chance of promotion, even in the arcane and unpaid world inhabited by school governors.

‘Did Mr Fenton give you any reason for refusing to reassume the chair?' said Hook dutifully.

‘No. Well, he said he had two children in the school and there could be a clash of interests if he was Chairman, that he didn't want to be seen to be favouring the progress of his own kids, but I'm sure that couldn't have been the real reason.'

Hook did not permit himself the sigh of frustration he felt so tempted to indulge. Men like Archie Weatherly did not take kindly to having their ideas dismissed. Instead, he took his leave politely, with the usual injunctions to Weatherly to get in touch if he had further relevant thoughts on this crime.

As he climbed into his car, he thought resignedly that his visit to Weatherly had been a waste of time, one of those many blind alleys which are inevitable in a murder investigation.

DS Bert Hook was for once quite wrong.

Collating the plethora of information which is gathered during the first days of a murder investigation is a taxing but generally rather dull administrative job. DI Chris Rushton was good at the work. He was not overawed by the welter of information from a large team, and his system of computer cross-referencing often threw up interesting connections which might otherwise have been overlooked.

And occasionally, but often enough to keep him excited, being back at headquarters in the CID at Oldford whilst his eccentric Superintendent was out and about put him in pole position, made him the first one to receive some unexpected gem of information.

The voice on the other end of the phone on the morning of Friday, the second of October, asked for Superintendent Lambert, the man in charge of the case. Chris concealed his irritation as he explained that John Lambert was out interviewing suspects in the case and that he was the Inspector collating all information. Once the initial scepticism at the other end of the phone had declined into mere surprise, the woman passed him on to her superior.

‘Superintendent Johnston here. National Paedophile Unit, New Scotland Yard. I understand John Lambert isn't available.'

‘Not at present, sir. He's out on the case. I can give him a message. It's DI Rushton here. I'm in charge of the collation of information on the Peter Logan murder.'

‘Right. Important piece of information for you, then. Peter Logan rang the Paedophile Unit on the Friday before he died. Said he had reason to believe that a member of his staff was indulging in paedophilia.'

Chris Rushton gulped, like a newspaperman sensing a scoop. ‘Did he give you a name?'

‘No. He said he didn't think there was any immediate urgency because he'd no evidence the man was active with children in the school. It was a man, by the way: you'd be surprised how many women we've turned up in the last year. And it was a teacher, not a member of the ancillary staff. But that's the only help I can give you. Logan was due to speak to me again on Tuesday of this week. I wondered why he hadn't come back to me. Now I find he's dead.'

‘And you think his death might be connected with this?'

There was a note of world-weary impatience in Johnston's voice as he said, ‘Yes, of course I do. Paedophilia is big business now. If this man was part of a ring, they might well have silenced Logan to keep their activities secret.'

‘And you've no idea which member of the teaching staff this might be? There are over fifty of them.'

‘No. And I doubt whether anyone else knows. Logan implied he was keeping his thoughts strictly to himself within the school. That's understandable: you land yourself in all kinds of trouble if you accuse someone working in a school of paedophilia without being certain of your ground.'

‘Right. I'll let Superintendent Lambert know immediately. I'm sure he'll liaise with you when he finds out more.'

When, not if, thought Chris Rushton. He wondered if he had just found the lead to the killer of Peter Logan.

The sitting room in Jane Logan's home, which had been littered with used cups and plates when they had been here last, was very tidy now. They were able to look through the window which had been curtained on Wednesday evening, down a long back garden where dahlias still blared their colours defiantly and bright blue Michaelmas daisies were mounds of early autumn colour.