The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid: Lennox 5 (26 page)

The school was poised on an oblong hillock that looked unnatural, like some huge burial mound. A broad expanse of playing fields sat on the flatlands to one side; on the other side scattered copses of meagre trees stood unconvinced between rolling, grassy dunes, as if considering moving inland where their roots would find more substance to hold on to.

There were only four other cars sitting outside the main entrance, suggesting there must be a car park for staff somewhere out of sight. The school was five miles from the nearest settlement in either direction, its only near neighbour the broken-toothed ruins of a coastal castle, and I guessed that most of the school’s staff would probably live in during term time.

Before I got out of the car I took a leather satchel briefcase out from where I’d stuffed it under the passenger seat: having it gave me a more official look, added to which was that I had a couple of things in it I didn’t want to leave unattended.

Standing outside the car, I could smell the ocean’s ozone breath in the air. It was a smell I associated with the sunshine of childhood summer days on the Bay of Fundy and it seemed completely out of place here, as I looked up at the grey fortress of the school against the insipid sky.

I felt suddenly isolated and despondent, as if I was suddenly a thousand miles from civilization – although I put a lot of that down to being in Ayrshire.

The main entrance opened into a large hall that, in true Scottish institutional style, managed to combine the baronial with the municipal. It was empty of people and I had to scan the signs on the burgundy-varnished oak doors before I found one that said
SCHOOL OFFICE
. I knocked and went in. A pair of horn-rimmed glasses scowled at me.

‘Hello,’ I said with my disarming Canadian cheeriness, ‘I’m here to see Mr Moncrieff, the headmaster.’

‘Is
Major
Moncrieff expecting you?’ She had short curly hair, and the horn-rims sat on a nose that was on the pug side of retroussé. In her late forties, she exuded all of the furious sexual repression of the eternal Miss.

‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘Yes he is. I have an appointment. I’m
Captain
Lennox.’

She scowled at me again, or maybe it was just the same scowl from a different angle, turned on her heel and disappeared into the hall.

A couple of minutes later she reappeared. ‘Follow me,’ she said dourly, and led me briskly along the hall, rapping on another door.

She swung the door open on command and held it for me to enter. Moncrieff welcomed me with one of those weary ‘I’ve got much more important things to do than talk to the likes of you
’
smiles – and shook my hand. A small, balding, overweight man of about fifty with a military-style trimmed moustache, there wasn’t much of an academic air to Moncrieff. Despite the military tache and title, he didn’t much look like a man of action either and I reckoned him for the type who’d seen the war out from behind a desk.

I examined him closely to see if he corresponded to any of the images seared into my brain during its brief exposure to the photographs. He didn’t; but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved.

‘Please sit down, Mr Lennox.’ He sat behind his huge desk and I sat opposite him. ‘It wasn’t very clear from your telephone call . . . what exactly is your interest in Robert Weston?’

‘Robert was a pupil here, I believe. A boarder.’

‘That’s correct. We have no day-boys or -girls here; everyone boards. But Robert left St Andrew’s over a year ago.’

‘Do you know what happened to him – after he left, I mean? Where he was living and what he was doing?’

‘We take great care to make sure all our former pupils are placed. Most, it has to be said, follow our advice and go into the services. It is my belief that the forces can offer a true family to those who have lost their own. But Robert didn’t want that. He was living in lodgings in Glasgow and we found him a place at a technical college there. Architecture, I believe.’

‘Have you any idea what could have driven him to do what he did?’

‘As I said, Robert left a year ago and, tragic though his accident was, it really has nothing to do with St Andrew’s. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question, Mr Lennox: what is your interest in young Robert?’

‘Suicide.’

‘What?’

‘You said Robert Weston’s death was an accident. It wasn’t: it was suicide. And my interest is because I’m investigating another suspicious death and there’s a chance the two may be linked. In fact I’m pretty certain of it.’

‘Oh? In what way linked?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to establish. And it’s also where you can perhaps help me.’

‘I don’t really know how I can.’ He frowned. ‘You said that you were looking into
another
suspicious death. Surely, tragic though it was, there can be nothing suspicious about Robert’s suicide?’

‘Robert committed suicide, all right. There’s no doubt about that. What interests me is
why
he killed himself. What, and who, drove him to it.’

‘You think someone drove Robert to take his own life?’

‘I’m sure of it. What I’m trying to understand are the circumstances surrounding his death: the people and events. The other death I’m investigating is tied into those circumstances.’

‘If there’s something suspicious about either of these deaths, shouldn’t the police be involved?’

‘Oh, the police are involved all right. The authorities. Let’s just say I’m assembling a case that may be of interest to the appropriate parties.’ I let it sink in for a moment. ‘What can you tell me about Robert? What kind of boy was he?’

‘There’s not much to tell, if I’m honest. We never had any trouble with him, if that’s what you mean. He was quiet. Kept himself to himself but otherwise contented. We never had any cause for concern – either about his behaviour or his mental wellbeing. It has of course to be said that Robert was an orphan and that in itself can lead to a profound sense of isolation. Ultimately depression. But a great many of our pupils are orphans and we are experienced in dealing with the problems that can attend. As a former pupil and outside the school, poor Robert was also beyond our pastoral care. Perhaps if—’

‘Did he have many visitors?’ I cut Moncrieff off and his expression conveyed that he wasn’t used to being interrupted.

‘As I explained to you, Robert was an orphan. He had no other family, immediate or otherwise, as far as I am aware.’

‘That’s not the kind of visitor I’m talking about. Did anyone else ever have any kind of – I don’t know – any kind of
interest
in Robert?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite—’

‘Any benefactor, or any other adults with an interest in him.’ I now didn’t just have my head above the parapet, I was standing on top of it, waving red flags and shouting
come and get me
. Moncrieff was trying awfully hard not to understand my meaning, but, as someone unused to having his authority challenged, his dissimulation was clumsy.

‘No. Robert never received any other visitors.’

‘Did he ever go on trips out of the school?’

‘Trips?’

‘Oh I don’t know . . . to Edinburgh. Or Glasgow. Places where he might have met with other people. Maybe a school outing with other pupils. Theatre outings, perhaps.’ I paused. ‘Comedy shows . . .’

‘No.’ It wasn’t an answer; it was intended as a punctuation mark. A full stop.

‘I see.’ I leaned back in the chair and rode the silence for a second.

‘Well, Mr Lennox, if that’s everything.’ Moncrieff started to rise; I stayed glued.

‘It’s just that I thought he might have had other visitors. Or maybe he was close to a particular member of staff. Your pupils come mainly from military families, is that right?’

‘That’s correct.’ Moncrieff was standing now, making no sign of sitting back down. ‘We don’t charge fees and are funded principally by a joint-services charity. A benevolent fund. We get some funding from the churches as well.’

‘Your staff also generally have army backgrounds, I believe. You don’t by any chance have a member of staff by the name of McNaught?’

‘We do not.’

‘I’ve maybe got the name wrong. A burly chap, ex-military type. He has a war wound on his face, makes it a bit lopsided. Does that sound like anyone you would know?’

‘No, Mr Lennox, it doesn’t. Now I don’t want to be rude, but I am very busy.’

I stood up. ‘Well, thanks for your time.’

‘Sorry I couldn’t have been more helpful,’ he said, singularly unapologetically.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ I smiled.

To make the point he walked me out of his office, along the hall and out of the front door. Behind us an electric bell trilled harshly and there was the echoing sound of many feet in transit. I noticed it was unaccompanied by the usual raucous noise of temporarily released youth.

‘Your pupils seem very disciplined,’ I said as I put my hat on.

‘It’s a virtue we impress on them,’ Moncrieff said. ‘We try to engraft the values of both collective and self-discipline. As you pointed out yourself, we are very much of a military tradition at St Andrew’s. Good day, Mr Lennox.’

‘Kids like that,’ I said thoughtfully, looking up at the grey milk sky, ‘I guess they don’t like to complain. Good at following orders – I suppose they’ll do pretty much anything their elders and betters tell them.’

Moncrieff said nothing.

‘That must make them pretty easy to control. And I would imagine make things very easy for you, Mr Moncrieff.’ I opened the car door. ‘Well, thanks for your time.’ I got in the Alpine and drove off. I could see Moncrieff standing on the school steps watching me all the way down the drive to the coastal road.

I had shown the dog the rabbit. Given the world a push. It was now only a matter of time.

*

I was almost disappointed by their predictability. It was early evening by the time I got home to my apartment; it had been thoroughly but discreetly gone over. They had done their best to cover their tracks, but I had left little traps: a hair stretched across a door jamb, a book set at a perfectly memorized angle, a puff of talc on the kitchen floor, that kind of thing. They would have been able to take their time: I had 'phoned in advance to make my appointment with Moncrieff, so they would have known for sure when they could turn my place over and I wouldn’t be there.

They weren’t that good, though. I had always thought that the hidden drawer beneath the hall mirror’s shelf was really the result of bad design, rather than deliberate concealment. Whatever the original intention, you wouldn’t know it was there unless you looked for it. And my secret visitors
had
been looking but hadn’t found the drawer. Maybe McNaught and his people weren’t the same, highly professional official snoopers who had turned over Nancy Ross’s.

Even if they had found the drawer, they would have found nothing in it. Expecting their visit, I had transferred the gun and knife to the leather satchel briefcase, which had lain stuffed beneath the passenger seat of the Alpine while I’d travelled down to St Andrew’s School. My new-found morality notwithstanding, I had thought it best not to leave them in the apartment – and given the fact I was doing all I could to force their hand, there was always the chance that they might have tried to put an end to my snooping on the lonely ribbon of coastal road as I drove home.

I looked at the gun in my hand for a long time before I put it and the commando knife back in the drawer, along with my remaining blue-tabbed key: the one for Tommy’s apartment.

I hadn’t been to the apartment yet. I would get round to it, but I knew that Tommy wouldn’t have left anything of any significance lying around – a lesson that my anonymous guests had just learned in turning over mine. In any case, I had the key by accident, rather than Tommy’s design.

After I freshened up and made myself a sandwich and a coffee, I rang Cohen’s house and asked to speak to Jennifer. We talked for half an hour, neither of us making reference to the situation we were in, other than when she asked if the journey to and from Ayrshire had been okay. Otherwise, we talked the same way we had in the tearoom: about everything and nothing and I pretended I was something like a normal guy and lived something like a normal life. Talking to Jennifer cheered me up, but when I put down the receiver I felt hollow and dark, like a room where window shutters had suddenly been closed on a sunlit day.

Archie 'phoned about nine. Not much sunlight there – but it was odd how his voice always sounded a little younger and less lugubrious when you couldn’t see the doleful eyes and undertaker face. One thing I did notice in his voice was a chord of concern. He was 'phoning, he explained, to find out how I had gotten on at the school, but I could tell he just wanted to check I was back and in one piece.

I gave him a breakdown of everything Moncrieff had said, and hadn’t said. Then I told him that they’d been through my flat when I was away.

‘Do you want me to come over?’ he asked, the chord of concern pulled that little bit tighter.

‘No, I’m fine. What you can do for me tomorrow is to get down to the registry of companies and see what you can find about the trust that runs St Andrew’s School. Who’s involved in it.’

He said he would, told me to take care, and hung up.

I turned in early. I had a big day ahead of me. I switched the light off and lay in the darkened bedroom smoking a cigarette, but I felt restless, itchy. I abruptly stubbed the cigarette out, switched on the light and went through to the hall mirror.

I lay back down and switched off the light again and fell swiftly asleep, aided by my comforter of a Walther P38 next to me on the nightstand.

It was a different type of operation to the Wishart brothers’ set-up. There were no cars for sale, no phoney glitz, just an oily dark cavern of brick garage with a single inspection pit and stacks of car parts and tyres. I had followed Tony the Pole’s lead – aided by some additional information supplied by Jonny Cohen – and found my way to the garage in Partick. Tony the Pole had suggested in eloquent Slavic-Celtic that I ‘ca’ canny’ – meaning I should take care. Not that I was to expect Davey Wilson to be dangerous either personally or in criminal connections: he was as straight and honest as his brother was quite the other thing. Tony’s advice for caution was because Davey Wilson was very protective of his brother – and Jimmy Wilson was very skilled at keeping himself hidden. If I handled it wrong, Jimmy might just dig himself deeper into his burrow and never be found.