Mortal Taste (7 page)

The Chief Constable would miss his Chief Superintendent when he lost him. Not for personal reasons, though he had grown to like as well as to admire the man. It was Lambert's expertise he would miss most. Douglas Gibson was a thief-taker still at heart, despite many years away from active police work. The Chief Constable wanted villains behind bars, and John Lambert had done more to put them there, more to improve the number of arrests for serious crime, than anyone else on this particular patch of England.

Gibson drafted a final letter pleading that Lambert should be made an exception to the retirement regulations. It wouldn't work; those faceless bureaucrats in London would have their way, but he would have done his best.

Meantime, he hoped fervently that John Lambert would win through on this last case.

There were a few curious onlookers around the point in the park where Peter Logan's body had been found, but not many.

This was partly because the uniformed constable guarding the scene from prying eyes was moving them on conscientiously, but rather more because there was nothing of interest to be seen. The copse of trees was cordoned off as an area of criminal investigation by the usual lengths of blue and white plastic tape, but what little activity there was within the rectangle was masked by the rather stunted trees.

Sergeant Jack Johnson, the SOC officer, was pleased to see Lambert picking his way into the cordoned area with the obligatory plastic bags over his shoes. Once the Superintendent had been and gone, he could pack up his equipment and take away his team and the scanty evidence they had gathered at the scene.

‘There isn't much here, John. We've bagged everything we've found, but most of it is probably just the detritus of a modern public park and nothing to do with this killing. The photographer's already finished and gone.'

Lambert nodded, glancing automatically at the plastic bags at the edge of the area cordoned off. He saw a couple of beer cans, several ancient ice-cream or iced-lolly sticks, an array of carefully collected fibres which would probably prove irrelevant. A PC was putting a used condom into a bag at this moment. As he held it at arm's length with his tweezers, his young features filled with an almost comic distaste. ‘Don't be so bloody squeamish, lad,' said Johnson in his old soldier's voice. ‘You're lucky, handling it like that. Some poor sod at forensic's going to have to investigate the contents before he can chuck it away.'

‘Did he die here?' said Lambert. The first and most important of the preliminary questions. If the corpse had been brought here and dumped after death, there would be a vehicle to search out, a possibility of bloodstains and other evidence from within it that might nail down a conviction quickly.

‘He was almost certainly killed here, the pathologist thought. He had a good look before he allowed the corpse to be put in the meat wagon. Blood and other bodily matter found at the base of that tree apparently confirm that the shooting was here.'

Lambert and Hook looked automatically at the base of the stunted birch. ‘Other bodily matter'. Brains, sinew, shattered bone. What had once made the thing which had been taken from here a man.

Johnson said, ‘He might just have been moved a little, so that the bushes covered him more effectively. He'd been dead for around twenty-four hours when he was found last night, the pathologist reckoned. But I've spent a good hour with the team around the entrance to the park where you came in. There's no sign that anything was dragged or carried through there.'

Lambert nodded. If Jack Johnson said nothing had come that way, then nothing had. He transferred his attention automatically back to the small, intimate cave of vegetation where they stood, trying to envisage exactly what had happened here. There was a moment of heavy silence before Hook said, ‘It looks as if he arranged to meet someone here.'

But what would a successful, highly respected headmaster be doing meeting someone with a gun in a place like this? It was Johnson who voiced an even more chilling alternative. ‘He might have been coerced to come here, of course. Someone might have decided in advance that this was a good place for a killing, might have brought him here in his car at gunpoint, or even forced him to drive himself here. His car was parked by the entrance. Forensic have taken it away to examine it.'

Lambert said, ‘We'll need to find out if he'd any reason to be in the area of his own accord.' As usual, he was thinking practically, wondering where the resources of a large murder team might best be deployed. They would need house to house enquiries throughout the quiet roads around the park. Someone might have seen something in the darkness of that early autumn night; someone might be able to suggest a reason why Logan would have come here willingly.

Johnson interrupted his thoughts. ‘He was shot at point-blank range. Through the back of his head.'

‘What with?'

‘No details of the weapon yet. Forensic might come up with something after the PM, I suppose, but there wasn't much of the head left to study. They did suggest that the entry wound indicated that there'd probably been a silencer on the murder weapon.'

‘You haven't found the bullet?'

The SOC sergeant shook his head sadly. ‘No sign of it in the SOC area. The top back of the head had gone completely. I'd guess a pistol was placed against the back of his head and fired with a slight elevation. The bullet may have continued onwards and upwards. Anyway, I'm satisfied it isn't anywhere in the immediate vicinity. We've looked hard enough.'

Hook looked at the ground in front of them, at the flattening of the sparse grass which indicated where the body had been found, at the sinister staining around the bole of the tree. ‘How tall was he?'

He didn't need to explain the basis of his question to the old hands around him. Jack Johnson shook his head and said with a mirthless smile, ‘He was over six feet, Bert. His assailant may have been only a little shorter. I'm afraid you can't assume it was a woman, or a resentful kid from his school.'

Lambert looked up at the quiet semi-detached houses by the park as they left. He had a curious sensation that he had sometimes experienced before that their killer was watching their efforts, was smiling mockingly at their minimal progress. But the houses might have been unoccupied; their fronts looked square and unhelpful, their windows were as blank and unfocussed as blind eyes. There was no twitching of a curtain to indicate a curious watcher, no sign of the nosey parker who might have witnessed useful things thirty-six hours earlier.

Lambert had the feeling already that this was going to be a complex case.

T
here was a curious air of subdued excitement hanging over Greenwood Comprehensive School.

Lambert and Hook felt it as soon as they got out of the police Mondeo in the staff car park. The weather was warm for the last day of September, but there had been no sun for several hours and the atmosphere was heavy under low cloud. There was not much movement evident in the place during the last hour of the school day, but a febrile, almost guilty, expectation hung over everyone who greeted them. The staff and the students of Greenwood were still absorbing the unthinkable tidings of their leader's death. Now they were waiting to see how the police would go about exposing his killers.

A tall woman with blonde hair met them before they could reach the Secretary's office. ‘Pat Dean, Deputy Head,' she said tersely. ‘Thank you for your phone call. Needless to say, we're all still very shocked. Needless to say also, we want you to find out who killed Peter, as quickly as possible.' She said this while taking them into the privacy of her office, as though even that short journey must be filled with assurances of support.

When they were sitting on the armchairs in her room, she said guiltily, ‘I can organize some tea. It's just that – well, as you can imagine, it's been a rather disjointed few hours.' The acknowledgement of that seemed almost a relief to her, and they divined that she had lurched from crisis to crisis in the organization of this fraught school day.

Lambert was as anxious as she was to get things under way. ‘No tea, thanks. We'll need to speak to all your staff, as quickly as we can. It will probably be necessary to have at least a collective word with your sixth-formers. Depending on the progress and the direction of the investigation, we may have to come back into the school, to follow up statements from different individuals.'

‘I understand that. All I ask is that you keep things as low-key as possible. I've had the press vultures on the phone all day, whilst I've been busy with other things. I fear they'll be waiting for the children outside the gates when they leave the school this evening.'

‘We've already arranged for male and female PCs to patrol the school exit for the hour from four to five. I can't guarantee that the more unscrupulous newshounds won't follow children home, trying to get quotes from them or their parents. This will be big national news, for at least a couple of days.' His long face cracked into a grimace of distaste for the transience of journalistic tragedy, and the tall woman behind the big desk warmed a little to him for it. He said, ‘I believe Mr Logan's own children attend the school.'

‘The elder one, Matthew, has just finished here and gone off to university. Catriona, the daughter, has just entered our sixth form. But as you'd expect, she isn't in today. I'm not expecting her to be around for the rest of the week. It will be better for the rest of us in the school as well as Catriona if we're allowed a period away from each other.'

‘We need to get our questioning under way as soon as possible.'

She nodded. ‘I've arranged for the staff to gather in the assembly hall at the end of afternoon school. It's more neutral ground than the staff room.'

‘Thank you. And thank you for your time now. I appreciate how busy you must be. We'll be as unobtrusive as possible, but we're bound to disrupt the life of the school to some extent.'

Mrs Dean gave them a rueful smile. She was no more than forty-five, her strong face more attractive because of her air of concentration. ‘That's already happened, as you can well imagine. But I'm grateful for your consideration. The sooner we can get the school back into a normal routine, the better it will be for everyone. If you can disturb that routine as little as possible, we'll all get on with life as well as is possible under the circumstances.'

Lambert nodded. ‘We'll keep things as low-key as we can. In the meantime, you may be able to help us to get things under way on the right lines. You were Mr Logan's Deputy Head; you must have known him very well.'

‘We had a very close professional relationship, yes.'

She put a stress on the word ‘professional' and they knew immediately that she was putting a little distance between herself and the dead man. Lambert decided to press on and ignore that. ‘So you must have had some immediate thoughts on who killed him. We'd like you to relay those reactions to us in the few minutes we have before we meet your staff.'

Pat Dean said stiffly, ‘My first reaction was one of outrage that anyone should do such a thing to Peter. It remains so, even after hours of hectic activity in the school today. I have no notion who might have killed him. It seems strange to me that you should expect me to have any such idea.'

‘Not so strange, surely.'

‘In so far as I have thought about the details of Peter's death at all, I have assumed it was a random piece of violence. You would no doubt agree that there are plenty of those in the world today. Not least because the schools and the police, rather than the society which employs us, get blamed for most of them.'

Lambert gave her a small, companionable smile at the comment, wondering whether it was a stock reaction or a diversionary tactic. ‘Very few pieces of serious violence are random, I'm afraid. There are three possible connections with this killing. Mr Logan's home life, his working life, or some secret private life outside both of those. The home life and the working life are much the most likely areas of connection. Hence our presence here this afternoon.'

She looked at them for a moment, then nodded reluctantly, as if accepting the logic of his assertion. ‘I shall be extremely surprised if Peter Logan's death was connected with his life in the school.'

‘So you can't immediately suggest any members of your staff to whom we should give particular attention?'

‘No. My relationship with Peter was a close professional one. Like everyone else, I am full of admiration for what he has achieved at Greenwood. But we didn't see much of each other outside working hours. I've met his wife on school occasions but, as I say, Peter and I didn't socialize much outside our work. No doubt you will unearth people in due course who can tell you much more than me about the private side of Peter Logan's life.'

She had a few more ideas than she was admitting to, Lambert was sure, but this wasn't the moment to press her. The school bells were ringing for the end of the day. And he was going to need this woman's co-operation as his murder team came and went within the school during the next few days.

He contented himself with saying, ‘Possible lines of inquiry may suggest themselves to you, when you have had a little more time to yourself. Please get in touch with me personally if they do, even if the people involved seem most unlikely possibilities.' Without meaning to, he had spoken as stiffly as she had.

Ten minutes later, she took them into the school's assembly hall to meet the staff. Lambert had asked that all the ancillary staff, the lab assistants, clerical staff, librarians and caretakers should come as well as the teaching staff. There were over a hundred people in the room. Schools had become a lot larger since his day, he thought ruefully.

It was rather like addressing a public meeting. Lambert explained that members of the CID team would be collecting preliminary statements from most of the people in the room over the next twenty-four hours. He was certain that everyone was as anxious as he was that the perpetrator of this brutal killing should be brought to justice as swiftly as possible. To that end, anyone who had any thoughts on the murder, however outlandish they might seem, should stay behind now and talk to him immediately.