Mortal Taste (14 page)

‘There are thirty-one male teachers at Greenwood.' She produced the figure without hesitation, then added dully, ‘How do you propose to go about vetting thirty-one teachers?'

Lambert thought quickly. ‘It's Friday. Mr Logan thought the man posed no immediate danger to the children in the school. We'll compile a list, then interview as many of them as we can in their homes over the weekend.'

She tried not to show the relief she felt on her face. ‘That will certainly help to minimize the disruption to the routine of the school. You won't get through thirty-one over the weekend, though, will you? Is there any way we can agree a shortlist of leading suspects? For instance, I can't think that our Senior Master, who is fifty-three and has five children, is going to be a strong candidate for this.' She smiled at the thought, looking suddenly much more attractive under her tousled blonde hair. Then she wiped away her mirth in the face of the seriousness of the problem.

‘Let's have the names of those who are male and single,' Lambert decided. ‘I'm sure this isn't a politically correct way of going about things, but we've got to start somewhere, and statistics would support us in taking this line.'

Hook made some careful notes from the staff files. They went away with a list of five teachers, all of them youngish men. Four of them would be appalled by the notion the CID would bring into their innocent lives. If all five should prove blameless, then the trawl would need to spread more widely, and the life of Greenwood Comprehensive School would be even more savagely disrupted in the coming weeks.

It was early on that Friday evening that Mark Lindsay met the man who had drawn him into the drugs trade.

It wasn't a scheduled meeting. Mark was in a cubicle in the smaller gents' cloakroom at the far end of Shakers, checking his supplies, getting ready for the evening. This was the night when he was going to spread his wings, to start offering pot to people who were not at school with him, who were part of that still mysterious and exotic working world outside.

He was much more on edge than he had anticipated. He had intended to stay off the grass tonight, to keep his brain cool and clear for what he must now treat as a working evening. But he needed something to steady his nerves. After only a moment's hesitation, he was smoking one of the spliffs he had planned to keep for the weekend.

He felt better after it, as he had known he would. He could almost imagine he felt the confidence seeping back into his veins. A few months of successful selling, a few months of fat commissions from the mysterious men above him in the chain, and he'd be more than a match for those confident young men who were so loud at the bar, so successful with the girls.

He hadn't heard anyone come into the tiled room outside the cubicle. He flushed the loo and strode confidently out, preparing to check his hair in the mirror before venturing forth among the people he must now regard as his clientele.

The man who had recruited him was neither urinating nor washing his hands. He was standing perfectly still, with his arms by his side and a small smile on his face. He wore black trousers and shoes and a black top that was relieved only by a slash of scarlet colour at its centre. Mark wondered how long he had been there.

He waited for him to speak, but the man said nothing. Against his will, seeming to have no control over his tongue, Mark faltered out words of his own to break the silence. ‘I've sold quite a lot of grass this week.'

‘In the school?'

‘Yes. It's been a bit difficult because—'

‘You'll need to extend your markets.'

‘Yes. I'm planning to do that tonight. I think I'll be able—'

‘Can't stand still in this game.' The man in black knew he shouldn't be pressurizing this young fool, that he was risking the success of his enterprise by pushing raw recruits into taking risks, but he couldn't see what choice he had. The words of Daniel Price in the shadows of that multi-storey car park rang still in his ears: ‘Just remember that the big boys above us will want to see returns. I wouldn't like you to attract their attention for the wrong reasons.'

He looked at Mark Lindsay, saw him wilting before his eyes, and said, ‘You'll need to get some of your customers at the school on to coke and horse. That's where the profit is.'

Mark hadn't been all that successful with the pot. He'd sold some, but that was to people who already used it, not new recruits to the game. And he'd had to let it go cheaper than his first asking price. He couldn't admit any of this to the man in black who watched him so closely. So he said, ‘I know that the hard drugs are what bring in the big money. But I need time, see. You don't want me to take unnecessary risks, do you?'

He had hit a nerve there. The man didn't want any of his pushers to take unnecessary risks, but he had Daniel Price pressing him for expansion on his patch. It was an impossible situation. He said, ‘I can get you good stuff. When your buyers find it's good, they'll be back for more. And they'll recommend you to others.'

‘Yes. I can see that. But I thought I'd cut my teeth on the cannabis – build up a network of clients, like you said.'

The man couldn't recall just what he'd said. He only remembered press-ganging this stupid kid into his system, trying to extend his network in the school. He said, ‘That makes sense. But you can't stand still in this game. There's others will want to come in and replace you, if you can't deliver.'

For a moment, Mark wanted to throw it all in and resign. Safe poverty seemed suddenly very attractive. But he knew from their last exchange that withdrawing wasn't an option. ‘I'm hoping to get some new clients tonight. Maybe some of them will want the hard stuff.'

‘You go carefully, me lad.' The warning came automatically, before the man in black could prevent himself. But probably young Lindsay was too nervous to recognize the contradiction. ‘Tell them you can get coke and heroin, if they're interested. And I can supply you with a certain amount of Ecstasy and Rohypnol. Mention those: they're the ones to get the randy little sods interested.'

Mark wanted to say that he had only undertaken to deal in cannabis, that he would be getting out of his depth if he ventured upon hard drugs sales, that he was scared shitless about being involved as a dealer in them. But he knew he could say none of this to this man who frightened him so much amidst the echoing tiles of this small, deserted room.

He said, ‘Thanks for the advice. I'm sure I can sell for you.'

Steve Fenton did not want to put the phone down and go back to the empty house.

He said, ‘I had Archie Weatherly on at me the other day. Wanted me to become the Chairman of the Governors at Greenwood again. Said Peter needed someone at the helm who would curb his more expansive ideas. That was whilst he was still alive of course.'

‘What did you say?'

‘I told him I couldn't take it on again. I made the excuse that I had two children of my own in the school and things could get embarrassing.'

‘And he accepted that?'

He could hear the anxiety in her voice. ‘Yes, I think he took it at face value. He blusters a lot, Archie, and he's been a powerful man in his time, but he doesn't know much about schools.'

‘It's important we keep a low profile.'

‘I know that.' He wished he hadn't mentioned Weatherly now; he had only really done it to keep her on the phone. He found a safer topic. ‘I still miss the kids, you know.'

‘I know you do. Have you sorted out access?'

‘Yes, I think so. Fairly amiably, as it turns out. I'm seeing them on Sunday. They're coming over here.'

‘You're lucky still to have the house where they grew up. Most men are condemned to a round of zoos and grotty cinemas.'

It sounded as though she was rebuking him, as if she felt he should be counting his blessings instead of moaning. He knew it was no more than her instinctive attempt to cheer him up, but sometimes you wanted commiseration and sympathy, not reminders that you were luckier than some.

He came back to what they had begun with, to the topic which he knew dominated her thoughts at present. ‘Anyway, they don't seem to know about us.' Both of them knew who ‘they' were. The police, who seemed in their heightened imaginations to be swarming all over Cheltenham.

‘And long may it remain so.'

‘Yes. But I told you, even if they find out that we are in love with each other, there's nothing they can prove.' He kept saying this, because he had a feeling that they were going to find out, eventually.

‘Perhaps not. But it's much better if we don't test that theory, Steve. They're going to wonder what else we've been concealing, if they find out we haven't told them about what we feel for each other.'

That was true enough. He had always had a feeling that the best form of defence was to tell as few lies as possible. But you couldn't turn the clock back now. He said hopelessly, ‘I love you.'

It worked, in that he heard a little giggle at the other end of the phone. ‘I love you too, you old softy. And I like to hear you say it. But it's much better that no one else knows, for the present. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!'

It was her usual affectionate, slightly mocking, farewell. For the first time, as he went back into the quiet kitchen, he wished she hadn't chosen her quote from
Hamlet
. That particular prince had come to a bad end.

Christine Lambert said, ‘You look tired, John.' Her husband looked vulnerable and she wanted to mother him. It was a strange feeling, one she had only felt over the last year or two.

‘I'm all right. This murder of the headmaster over at Cheltenham is going to take some cracking.'

‘No pointers yet?'

‘A few pointers, but in different directions. It's always the same in these cases. Unless there's an obvious suspect, unless you've made an arrest within twenty-four hours, you begin to turn over stones people would much rather you'd left undisturbed. You discover all kinds of things underneath them. Then you have to work out what is and what isn't relevant to this particular crime.'

‘You'll sort it. You're good at these things. I know that, because the papers keep telling me it's so.' She enjoyed teasing him about his work, a thing she had never been able to do in the old days. Christine Lambert had had a mastectomy and a heart bypass in the last five years, and the tensions of those months had brought them much closer together. She could not believe how anxious he had been for her; she sometimes thought he had been secretly rather surprised himself by the intensity of his feelings.

She realized now that he was giving full attention neither to the
Times
crossword on his knee nor to the television set which winked steadily in the corner of the room. He was preoccupied as usual with a puzzling case. But it was a healthy preoccupation, as far as murder could be healthy. He was more alert, more eager for life, than he had been last week, and his tiredness was probably the kind of satisfying fatigue that came from long hours of exacting labour.

‘I'd like to solve this one, if it is to be my last murder,' he said suddenly. She knew that. She also noted the ‘if'. This was bound to be his last case; it was time he accepted that. Was the core of him still stubbornly refusing to confront retirement, whilst he made all the conventional noises on the outside?

She said, ‘Jacky's hoping to come over with the children tomorrow.'

‘I'll probably be out, love. This case in Cheltenham, you see. Tell her I'll see her soon, if I miss her.'

He was like a dog with a bone, with a murder hunt to occupy him. Or a child with a new toy. But she wasn't going to change that particular sort of childishness now.

Long after John had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Christine Lambert was worrying about the years ahead.

S
teve Fenton got only twenty minutes notice of the CID visit.

It was DS Hook, the voice on the phone said, the words slow and clear despite the rich Herefordshire accent. Sorry to bother him on a Saturday morning. It was just a matter of a few questions in connection with the investigation into the murder of Peter Logan. As Mr Fenton was a governor of Greenwood Comprehensive and a former Chairman of the Governors, he might have useful insights to offer. Hook's reassuring voice didn't exactly say that this was merely a matter of routine, but it implied as much.

It was only after Steve had put the phone down that he began to get nervous.

He was beset by an overwhelming need to occupy himself in physical action. He got the vacuum cleaner out and ran it over a carpet which did not need it; wiped the top of the units in an already tidy kitchen; behaved, he thought wryly, like a young wife expecting her mother-in-law.

They came very promptly at ten o'clock. The stolid detective sergeant he identified immediately as the owner of the local accent. The superintendent was a taller man with grey eyes which seemed to look into everything and see more than they should. Steve took them into his unused dining room and sat them down on upright chairs on the other side of the table from him. Even as they took the chairs he offered them, he found himself wishing he had seated them less formally in the sitting room, but it was too late for that now.

‘I'm willing to give all the help I can, of course. This is a terrible business. But I'm afraid I haven't anything very useful to offer you.' Steve said it nervously, before they had even properly seated themselves, and regretted the banality of it immediately.

Lambert did not react to the disclaimer, did not even acknowledge it. ‘You used to be Chairman of the Greenwood Governors, Mr Fenton. What kind of a man would you say Peter Logan was?'

Steve had rehearsed many scenarios in his mind over the last few days, but not this immediate directness, without any of the normal conversational preambles. ‘Well, I only saw him in a professional context, of course. He seemed to me a very effective headmaster, and the results of his work are there for all to see.'