A Little Learning (6 page)

The reaction didn’t prevent DS Blake from persisting. ‘So you haven’t been teaching anywhere, these last few years?’

‘I’ve done a couple of evenings of history teaching for the WEA for several years, now. I enjoy that. Adults who are keen to learn and stuff that’s worth teaching!’ Her sudden animation made them wonder how she estimated her husband’s work and the steps he had taken to secure his elevated post. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been wondering whether to go back into a full-time post in higher education.’

‘Thank you. It may seem to be of no relevance to you at this stage, but we need the fullest possible picture of the household where a murder victim existed.’

Peach stood up. ‘As I said, we shall probably need to see you again. If you think of anything which may help our investigation, however trivial, please get in touch with me immediately at Brunton CID section.’

‘When can I return home, Inspector?’

He hesitated. ‘It would be best if you could leave it until Wednesday morning, if that’s possible. And — well, if you can arrange it, you should have someone with you when you go back there, I think.’

She gave them that small, composed smile which they now knew well. ‘Thank you for thinking of that. I shall make appropriate arrangements.’

Peach would have given quite a lot to know what they might be.

As she took them out through the hall, the woman they had seen briefly in the doorway of the kitchen as they came into the house was waiting for them. Her face was stained with tears, her flying grey hair a contrast to her daughter’s neatly arranged ash-blonde waves as she said, ‘He was very good to me, was George. Good as my own son. Make sure you get whoever did this to him, won’t you?’

Ruth Carter, a good half a foot taller than her mother, quickly put her arm round the trembling shoulders and led her firmly away. But the picture of that distraught elderly woman stayed in both their minds as they drove back to the motorway.

It was the only instance of raw, painful grief for the dead man they had seen so far.

Eight

The death of the Director of the UEL had surprisingly little immediate effect on the activities of the university. The sensational event was a source of intense speculation among the academic and other staff, but only a few found that their working day was much changed.

The students were affected even less by the passing of a figurehead who was necessarily quite remote from their everyday life and concerns. The teaching timetable went ahead as usual on the Monday when the news of the death broke. Despite a lively interest in the comings and goings of the police, only a few of their immediate contemporaries were even aware of the part that Paul Barnes and Gary Pilkington had played in the discovery of the corpse of Dr Claptrap Carter, their sometime Director.

There were many theories of how the great man had died, and some lurid rumours which were quite without foundation were circulating on the campus by the time that the day’s teaching finished in late afternoon. But the death did not otherwise affect the lives of the students, who had their own concerns of lectures, tutorials, lab sessions and assignments to occupy them. It was difficult to feel much grief for a man you had never known apart from his rather risible public performances.

And when you are nineteen, there are more personal and pressing concerns. For Peter Tiler, these were principally concerned with his ongoing campaign to get a girl into bed. By half-past nine on the evening of the day when Carter’s body was discovered, Peter was oblivious to every other concern.

It was supposed to be very easy, no more than par for the course for a university student. Girls were sexually liberated now, at ease with their hormones and as anxious to explore sexual experience as their male counterparts. Peter had heard about it, had even read about it, and could remember it quite clearly in print. He was a first-year maths student who had read a lot of print, and was still young enough to believe that all printed material carried the stamp of truth.

But none of the print had told him that acne did not disappear obediently with university entrance; nor that boys would outnumber girls by six to one in the Maths Department; nor that all the first-year girls would be appropriated by the second-year students in the first week, while he was still finding his feet as a fresher in the university. There were plenty of girls in other faculties, of course, but they all seemed to him articulate and highly sophisticated, with groups of friends who knew each other well. Peter Tiler was finding it difficult to break into the charmed circle of female companionship.

But he thought of himself as a logical man. So he considered his situation and worked out a plan. With the things he had stacked against him, the things the magazine and newspaper articles hadn’t acknowledged, he needed some sort of artificial aid; something above and beyond his own personality. He tried a little pot, before he went to the disco on Friday night, to give him confidence. And it had worked: he’d found himself a girl.

Well, some people might have said that was putting it rather too strongly. But he’d found it much easier than previously to talk to girls, had been able to relax and chat with them as if he’d been doing it for years. And he’d eventually succeeded in detaching one from the group, a girl with bright eyes and dark hair who was studying medieval economic history. That was quite a mouthful, but Peter frankly didn’t care what she was studying, so long as she took an interest in him.

And she appeared to do just that. She had agreed with only a little hesitation to see him again, this Monday night. Kathleen Stevens, she was called. Peter found that he repeated the name to himself constantly over the weekend. It had a pleasantly old-fashioned ring which for some reason he found reassuring. He was glad he had arranged to take her off the campus. He didn’t fancy conducting the tentative moves towards copulation under the critical eyes of his peers.

He even had doubts about whether he should try for bed, on this first occasion. He wouldn’t mind if it took several meetings, really: not if they got on well with each other. But if he didn’t at least try, he’d probably be thought a wimp. Or even gay. The girl he’d been left with at the end of the Freshers’ Reception, on his first day on the campus, had asked him if he was gay, presumably because he hadn’t made any great physical moves towards her.

They were going to the cinema, in Brunton, to see
Billy
Elliot
. Peter didn’t know much about it, but Kathleen had said she’d like to see it, and he’d jumped at the chance to get her to himself and away from the campus.

Now, as he made himself ready to go, he found his confidence ebbing away. His red spots on his forehead looked worse than ever when he inspected them in the mirror over his washbasin. After he had shaved and showered, he put on liberal applications of deodorant and after-shave, but you couldn’t disguise what people could see for themselves. It had been all right on Friday, in the darkness of the disco, but tonight Kathleen Stevens would see him as he really was. He wished they could be transported without sight of each other into the darkness of the cinema. But all he could do was pull the baseball cap he was planning to wear a little further down at the front.

At half-past six, he smoked a small joint of the pot he had found so helpful on Friday, then slipped the remaining spliffs of it with the tablets of Ecstasy into the pocket of his anorak. No going back now, he told himself. Over the top. Wasn’t that what soldiers said, when they walked towards death? Silly expression, then. He grinned at himself as the pot surged through his veins. No going back now!

Kathleen Stevens wasn’t quite as beautiful as his imagination had made her over a fevered weekend. Her face was a little larger and her eyes a little smaller than he had thought: the subdued lighting of the disco was kind to other people as well as to him.

But she smiled at him, and her face lit up from the anxiety it had shown when she thought he might not be there. She was very pretty when she smiled, he thought. And curiously, he found that he was pleased that she was not quite the stunning beauty he had envisaged. It made her easier to talk to. Perhaps, if all went well with the evening, easier to seduce.

They travelled together on the college bus that ran every half-hour into Brunton, and Peter realized that Kathleen was almost as shy as he was. She insisted on paying for herself at the cinema, pointing out that both of them were students. The film was good, but there were parts of it he hardly saw, because he was so preoccupied with his tactics towards the girl next to him. It was a pity it was so funny, because it was difficult to make progress with a girl who kept bursting into delighted laughter with the rest of the audience.

But he had his arm round her by the end of the film and she seemed quite contented, even submissive, as they walked hand in hand to the pub he had chosen afterwards. It was an old-fashioned pub, Edwardian he thought, and while it had been expensively modernized in recent years, the brewery had retained some of the original alcoves with single small tables down one of the walls. Peter installed Kathleen in one of these and bought her the glass of white wine she requested.

He lit up a thin joint as they sat with the drinks and offered it to Kathleen. She looked startled, took a single short puff and blew the smoke out quickly. She refused any further offers and watched Peter puffing enthusiastically, trying to encourage her by his nonchalant air. Eventually, she said quietly, ‘I don’t think you should do that, Peter.’

He stubbed the joint out in the ashtray: it was almost finished anyway. ‘Your wish is my command!’ he said, emboldened as he had hoped by the little intake of pot. He went without consulting Kathleen to get more drinks. While he was at the bar, he put the ground Ecstasy tablet into her second glass of white wine, keeping his body carefully between the bar and Kathleen, so that she would not see what he was about. It refused to dissolve, remaining fairly obviously a powder at the bottom of the glass.

Peter seized a cocktail stick from the bar and stirred the wine furiously. It would have been better if he could have got some of this new drug Rohypnol he had read about, which dissolved instantly and was undetectable, the one they used in date-rape cases. But he’d had no chance of getting that, had been lucky to get the six tablets of Ecstasy which the man had called Silver Dollars. And everyone said Ecstasy worked, that it got the girls going and removed all inhibitions. He gave the glass a last, furious stir, summoned his most confident smile, and turned back to the table with his half of bitter and the glass of white wine.

He had been so preoccupied with his plans and with keeping his movements secret from Kathleen Stevens that he had forgotten the need for any other sort of concealment. He had been completely unconscious of the man in nondescript blue jeans and sweater who watched him with interest from his position five yards to his left at the bar.

Even when he followed Peter across to the alcove with the drinks, it was Kathleen who noticed him first. Peter Tiler had still not registered his presence when the man said quietly to Kathleen, ‘Don’t drink any of that, love. There’s no knowing what it might do to you.’

Peter turned in startled indignation, to find himself staring into cool brown eyes, above a thin line of a mouth and a stubbled chin. The mouth said calmly, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of possession of a Class A drug. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be recorded and may be given in evidence.’

The mattress in the cell was thin, the bed beneath it hard as concrete. It was not at all the kind of night Peter Tiler had planned for himself.

*

The Scene of Crime team took a long time to search the site residence of Dr George Andrew Carter, and ended with an extensive collection of bagged and labelled articles from the five-bedroomed house of the Director. When you do not know what you are searching for, and almost anything may later prove significant, you have to take note of a huge range of items.

And the death of a high-ranking academic, like that of a high-ranking businessman, means that the place where he conducted his work is almost equally likely to provide clues to his demise. DI Percy Peach descended upon the Director’s personal secretary ‘like the wrath of God’, as she later resentfully described it to her eagerly listening colleagues.

Peach, sizing up a woman whom he immediately saw as the Dragon at the Gate, was in no mood to be driven off: he drew his sword and charged. ‘I need immediate access to all your files, all correspondence, and the diary you and Dr Carter kept of his weekly appointments,’ he said.

Ms Angela Burns, forty-five, iron-grey of hair, eyes and manner, donned the mien which had terrified students and sent many a tutor retreating in confusion. ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible. There is much material in the files which is highly confidential. There may be meetings noted in Dr Carter’s letters and diary which are completely private matters and —’

‘Good! It is the confidential and private material which is of most interest to us. So if you can assist us in pinpointing the key areas, you will be helping the police in the course of their enquiries — which of course you are only too anxious to do.’ Peach’s eyebrows arched interrogatively above his terrier smile.

‘You really must understand, Inspector, that I can’t —’

‘No, Ms Burns, it is you who must understand. You must understand that you can’t get in the way of a murder inquiry. We are given wide-ranging powers to go where we want and to see whom and what we think is appropriate.’

She folded her arms, trying desperately to summon a defence against this assault from a quarter she had never had to deal with before. She said icily, ‘Do you have a search warrant, Inspector Peach?’

Percy beamed delightedly. ‘I don’t need one, Ms Burns. Not to search the Director’s room; not to go through his files; not to read his correspondence; not to demand and receive the fullest cooperation from Dr Carter’s personal secretary. Not a pleasant thing, murder, but it gets rid of a lot of red tape.’

Ms Burns’s forehead furrowed like the ridges of a thunder cloud beneath the tightly disciplined grey hair. She wouldn’t retreat. She wouldn’t put up the white flag. She would never openly acknowledge that this bouncy little man from a world she had never encountered before had a victory. But she was an intelligent woman, and she sensed that further resistance would only lead to greater embarrassment. Defer with dignity, if you have to, was always her counsel to more junior members of the administrative staff.

She didn’t often have to practise it herself, but this seemed like one of those rare occasions. She said stiffly, ‘I shall of course give you whatever help I can, Inspector. I am as anxious as you are that whoever did this dreadful thing should be brought to justice.’

One of Peach’s virtues was to be generous in victory. He rarely rubbed an opponent’s nose in the dust, especially a nose as worthy as that of the admirably loyal Angela Burns. ‘Thank you. I’m sure you are. And my detective constables know what to look for. They will cause you some inconvenience in going through the files, but no more than they have to. And they are strict respecters of confidentiality. Nothing we collect from here will become public knowledge, unless of course it has a bearing upon a later court case.’ He ushered in the DCs, one male and one female, who had ten minutes before his arrival been brusquely dismissed by Ms Burns, and set them to work on the files with her as their knowledgeable assistant. Then he went through the outer office into the Director’s room.