The Cadaver Game (23 page)

‘And what?’

‘And blasting them in the chest with a shotgun.’

The Steward’s Journal

24 July 1815

Oh, what excitement there is in the district! Bonaparte himself has come amongst us. HMS
Bellerophon
has dropped anchor off Morbay, and as soon as word spread, numerous boats conveyed people out to the ship to view that formidable
man.

I had it from a man of the village, who met with a sailor, that Bonaparte walked above an hour on deck so that people would
have the opportunity of seeing him, and whenever he observed a lady he would remove his hat and bow. How remarkable that such
a man would behave thus like a true gentleman.

I came upon the Lady Pegassa with a large portmanteau, which I recognised as belonging to the Squire. She appeared to be struggling
under its weight and when she
saw me, she looked most afraid, as though I had caught her in some shameful act. I forgot that she spoke no English and I
found myself asking her what she was doing. To my astonishment, she took my arm and led me into her bedchamber. The action
was so unexpected that I found that I was struck quite dumb for a few moments. Could it be that she desired me? And if this
was the case, what was I to do?

She closed the door and stood before me, the portmanteau at her feet. Then she spoke in a whisper.

‘I am afraid,’ she said.

I gaped at her for a while, amazed to hear her speak in my native tongue. And she sounded for all the world like a Devonshire
girl rather than some princess from across the seas.

Before they questioned Marcus Dexter, Wesley wanted to read the piece he had written for himself. According to Rachel, his
teacher, Mr Dickens, had kept hold of it, maybe as an example to future students of vivid prose. Dickens lived nearby in Tradmouth,
so Wesley thought that having a civilised chat with the teacher before confronting the boy might be the best way forward.
It was best to be armed with all the facts. And besides, it was always possible that Dickens was being over-imaginative, that
the piece Marcus had written bore no real resemblance to the deaths of Sophie and Barney.

Wesley left the police station and walked to Dickens’s address on Albany Street. Once the main street into Tradmouth, Albany
Street rose upwards towards Wesley’s own house in a series of wide, cobbled steps, fine for the packhorses and donkeys who’d
brought goods in and out of the port in days gone by but useless for anything with an
internal combustion engine. It was narrow, precipitously steep, and the subject of many a picture postcard with its crooked
pastel-painted houses and window boxes filled with bright, scented flowers.

Dickens’s small cottage stood at the end of a row next to a flight of stone steps leading to a street below. The cottage was
pristine white with a glossy black front door, which bore a plaque with the name ‘Bookman’s Cottage’ painted in decorative
gold letters. The owner hadn’t chosen the usual Tradmouth maritime theme for his house name, rather he had selected something
to reflect his own interest in literature. Wesley felt rather keen to make the acquaintance of this English teacher with the
literary name that no doubt caused some mirth amongst his students.

The door was answered almost immediately, as though the occupant of the house had been waiting on the other side for Wesley’s
knock.

Dickens was a small, round man whose long, grey hair was gathered back in a pony tail. His face was smooth and it was hard
to guess his age, but his bow tie and brightly coloured waistcoat, gave Wesley the impression of an actor playing the part
of the absent-minded academic. He led Wesley into a room lined from floor to ceiling with books and invited him to sit on
a sagging antique sofa. The room too had the look of a stage set: the unworldly professor’s natural habitat.

‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’

‘You told my colleague DS Tracey that your student, Marcus Dexter, wrote something about a shooting.’

Dickens began to fidget with the corner of his waistcoat. ‘So I did. I rather wish I hadn’t.’

‘Why is that?’

‘He is my student and I feel I’ve betrayed his trust, that’s why. Can you understand that?’

‘I can, Mr Dickens. But if Marcus hasn’t done anything wrong he has nothing to fear.’

Dickens snorted. ‘Now where have I heard that one before? Our great British police aren’t always renowned for getting it right,
are they?’ He studied Wesley for a minute. ‘But I suppose you look slightly more intelligent than most of the Neanderthals
they seem to select for the force.’

‘You sound as though you’ve had a bad experience with the police.’

‘When you’ve been arrested like I have for exercising your democratic right to demonstrate against oppressive government policy,
you tend not to have too high an opinion of the boys in blue. I expect you’ve had a hard time, being black.’

‘There have been moments – especially when I was working in London.’ Wesley knew he needed to gain the man’s trust. ‘Look,
I sympathise with your point of view but two of your students have been murdered so—’

‘Barney wasn’t my student. He was one of the scientific brigade. All facts and no imagination.’

‘That doesn’t mean he deserved to die like that.’

There was an awkward silence and Wesley hoped his last words hadn’t created a barrier between them. Dickens was staring at
a picture hanging above the fireplace; a long, framed school photograph in black and white.

‘How long have you taught at Corley Grange?’ he asked.

‘Thirty years. I’ve seen a lot of students come and go. Some have been successful and others have dropped by the wayside.
I count two cabinet ministers, a celebrity chef and the youngest ever master of an Oxford college among my
successes. My failures one doesn’t tend to hear about. But, as far as I’m aware, I’ve never taught a murderer and I don’t
think that situation has changed during the past few weeks.’

‘But you told my colleague about the piece Marcus Dexter wrote so it must have worried you.’

Dickens looked Wesley in the eye. ‘In view of what happened to Barney and Sophie, it did worry me, you’re right. That’s why
I mentioned it.’

‘We can’t turn the clock back, you realise that. We can’t just ignore it and pretend we don’t know.’

Dickens didn’t reply.

‘May I see the piece Marcus wrote? Do you have it here?’

Dickens let out a long sigh. ‘Yes. After your colleague’s call I drove over to school and picked it up. I didn’t want it to
get lost or cleared away by an over-zealous cleaner.’ He stood up and walked a few paces to the bookshelves to the right of
the fireplace, opened a large rosewood box and took out a sheaf of A4 papers, stapled together in the top left hand corner.

He held it out to Wesley, who thanked him as he took it from his outstretched hand. Wesley began to read it through carefully,
absorbing every description, every nuance of emotion.

‘I am the hunter,’
it began.
‘I hunt to the death. My ears are tuned to the sound of my prey. Every breath, every sigh. Every squeak of exhaled air, as
the exertion of running forces the breath out of my victims’ gasping lungs. The weapon I carry is heavy, weighing me down
and impeding my progress. Shall I abandon it and kill with my bare hands? If I were a stronger man, that would be my aim but,
as it is, I cannot end two lives cleanly and without detection unless I make those preparations so necessary for one in my
trade. For death is a trade, like
whoring or selling your mind and most cherished ideas to the highest bidder.’

Wesley read on, fascinated. The boy had written a vivid description of the pursuit of two fleeing victims. And at the end
of the third page, those victims met their deaths. The hunter came on them in a clearing and shone a light into their eyes,
dazzling them like cornered beasts – lamping only with human quarry. The victims in Marcus’s story were naked and they were
both women who’d rejected the hunter, which Wesley found somewhat disturbing. He stared down at the text. There was no escaping
the fact that the similarities to the double murder were remarkable.

‘May I keep this?’ he asked. ‘I’ll let you have it back as soon as possible.’

‘If you must.’

As Wesley placed the story carefully in a plastic folder, Dickens didn’t look too happy. But there was nothing he could do
about it.

‘What can you tell me about Marcus? What sort of boy is he?’

He was prepared to hear a eulogy, a defence of one of the teacher’s top pupils. But it seemed Dickens had decided on the truthful
approach.

‘He has a brilliant mind, Inspector. But that doesn’t make him a particularly likeable person. A few months ago he called
me an old queen, implying that I had a penchant for getting inappropriately close to the younger boys. It isn’t true, of course:
I’m always careful to keep a professional distance – you have to in the present climate – but the fact that it was Marcus
who said it, someone I’ve tried so hard to encourage … I found that hurtful.’ He paused, as though he was making a decision.
‘Recently I’ve sensed bad feeling
between him and Barney, although I can’t be certain of that. It was just one of those things one picks up on the ether, as
it were.’

Wesley already knew that Barney and Marcus had had a fight but he wanted Dickens’s angle on it. Jodie, after all, might have
been bending the truth for some reason of her own. ‘What was the bad feeling about?’

‘I’m sure Marcus is resolutely heterosexual so I would think it would be about a girl, wouldn’t you? The perils of co-education.
In the days when the school was boys only, one didn’t have to worry about these things.’

‘You think the girl was Sophie?’

‘Now that I can’t say. Contrary to my reputation, I don’t know everything that goes on at Corley Grange.’

‘What about Barney and Sophie? What were they like?’ Wesley thought it was time Dickens was reminded that the matter was serious
– that two young people had died.

‘In a word, they were unremarkable. Run of the mill. Neither was going to set the world on fire.’

‘Unlike Marcus?’

‘Unlike Marcus. And Dunstan too is a bright lad, although he may never reach his full potential. I don’t know all the gory
details, of course but I’ve heard that there are financial problems, and others for all I know. Hardship can be a spur to
greater things for some people, but for poor Dunstan, I fear it has proved an unfortunate distraction to his studies.’ He
hesitated for a moment. ‘If you speak to Marcus, please don’t mention that it was me who told you about the story. After all,
nobody likes a Judas.’

Wesley stood up. ‘You did the right thing, Mr Dickens. In the circumstances there was no way you could have kept quiet about
that story. Thank you.’

‘Will you interview him? Take him to your cells and—’

‘We’ll speak to him.’

‘He really is a most remarkable boy, you know,’ were the last words Dickens said before Wesley left him alone with his books.

Wesley walked back to the police station, his progress impeded by groups of tourists, lingering to point their cameras at
Tradmouth’s prettier views.

As he walked, he thought about what Dickens had told him. Marcus had written the story; Marcus had known where the victims
would be; Marcus had no alibi for the time of the murders. He had also fallen out with Barney, possibly about Sophie. It fitted
so well that they had no choice. They needed to bring the boy in for questioning and they had to do it soon, before Dickens
had a fit of conscience and took it into his head to warn him that the police had been sniffing around. However, Dickens could
have called Marcus as soon as Wesley had left his cottage so they might already be too late to have the advantage of surprise.

When he reached the incident room, he found Gerry holding an earnest conversation with Rachel. When he spotted Wesley, he
raised a hand to greet him. From the expression on his face, Wesley knew that there had been a development in his absence.

‘We had another call from Tessa Trencham while you were out, Wes. She’s about to catch the ferry. Should be back tomorrow.’

‘Did she tell you any more?’

‘She confirmed that the lease ran out on Evie Smith’s house in Roly Walk and she told her she could stay at her
place while she was away. Evie was waiting to move into another place that wasn’t ready yet, and Tessa didn’t want to leave
her place empty, so the arrangement suited both of them fine.’

‘How does Tessa know her?’

‘That’s on the long list of questions I’ll be asking her as soon as she arrives, but I get the impression she didn’t know
her that well. We’ve had no luck tracing Evie through official records yet, which is a bit odd, don’t you think? You look
like you’re in a good mood, Wes. Did you get anything out of that teacher?’

‘As a matter of fact my visit proved quite interesting,’ he said before revealing everything he’d learned. He had Marcus’s
story in a plastic folder and he passed it over.

Gerry scanned it and handed it back. ‘Do you think this Mr Dickens will take it into his head to warn Marcus of our interest?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. He seems to think a lot of him … academically.’

‘Any other way?’

‘He did imply that he’s not a very nice person, so I think he’s just impressed with his talent. Pam’s the same. If you have
an outstanding pupil you do tend to feel they’re your protégé.’

‘And he might not want his precious protégé’s future ruined by a murder charge.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t think we
should waste any more time.’

Marcus Dexter lived outside the village of Balwell, just off the main road from Tradmouth to Neston, in an elegant double-fronted
Regency house built out of mellow stone. The sort sometimes referred to as a ‘gentleman’s residence’
and a setting any of Jane Austen’s heroines would have felt at home in.

Wesley swung the car into the gravel drive, his tyres crunching loud enough to announce their arrival. He parked at the end
of a row of other vehicles, mostly expensive four by fours, and when they emerged from the car he could hear the sound of
conversation punctuated by the occasional hoot of laughter. The noise was coming from the back of the house so, after ringing
the doorbell and getting no reply, Gerry led the way through a pretty side-garden towards the rear of the house. They could
smell something delicious – the tempting aroma of cooking meat – and when they reached the corner of the house they stood
for a while watching.