Authors: Bruce Beckham
Murder In School
Bruce Beckham
__________
Murder in School
A detective novel
LUCiUS
Text
copyright 2014 Bruce Beckham
All
rights reserved. Bruce Beckham asserts his right always to be identified
as the author of this work. No part may be copied or transmitted without
written permission from the publisher.
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is entirely
coincidental.
Kindle
edition first published by Lucius 2014
For
more details and Rights enquiries contact:
EDITOR’S
NOTE
This
novel,
Murder in School,
is a stand-alone whodunit, the second in the
series ‘Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates.’
BY
THE SAME AUTHOR
Murder
in Adland
Murder
on the Edge
Murder
on the Lake
(Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates)
Murder
Mystery Collection
The
Dune
The
Sexopaths
‘Guv, how can you do that? Three
naan
breads in one sitting must be a Cumbrian record.’
Skelgill grins sheepishly. ‘I ate
four after my last
Bob Graham.
And you did take a chunk.’
‘About two square inches, Guv.’
‘Got to keep your figure, I suppose.’
DS Jones approximates the area with
right-angled fingers and thumbs, and then playfully raises the little
rectangular window to her twinkling right eye. She frames Skelgill and
says, ‘You might be on telly tomorrow morning, Guv.’
Skelgill rocks back in his chair.
There’s a worrying creak and he jolts forward with a thump that draws anxious
glances from fellow diners. In a lowered voice he hisses, ‘What?
You must be joking. When the Chief can steal the show? I’ll be ordered
to attention in the background – which I don’t need. Let’s just
remind the local crooks what the plain-clothes cops look like. Smart can go
instead and take the credit.’
‘But, Guv – it was your case.
You cracked it. Why should DI Smart appear at the press conference?’
‘He’s good-looking, isn’t he?
Photogenic...’
‘He’s a slimeball, Guv.’
Skelgill raises an eyebrow, perhaps betraying
a hint of approval. DI Smart fancies himself around the station, and
always casts a smooth line of patter in the path of DS Jones. Whether out
of good nature or political expediency, she appears to bite on these little morsels,
much to Skelgill’s chagrin.
‘You’re not jealous of Smart, Guv?’
There’s a
bing
from Skelgill’s mobile,
which lies on the tablecloth between them. He opts for the distraction it
provides.
‘Sorry – I’ll switch it off in a
sec.’
Still he checks the message, a frown methodically
carving its furrows across his brow as he reads.
‘What is it, Guv? Work?’
He reaches for his glass and drains the last
few dregs of Indian lager, taking his time to swallow.
DS Jones inserts a prompt. ‘Good
news or bad news?’
Skelgill can’t conceal a momentary flushing
across his high cheekbones. After a pause he says, flatly, ‘Both, I
guess.’
‘Well – what’s the good news?’
‘If you’d call it that. I’m excused
from the press conference. The Chief wants me at Oakthwaite first thing.’
‘The school?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I remember when I was about fifteen some
of the Oakthwaite sixth-formers used to drink in Penrith.’
Skelgill’s gaze rests thoughtfully on DS
Jones. At twenty-six she’s not long out of teenage, at least from his
late-thirties perspective; while his own memories of that era are a distant
haze of pub-smoke and rock music.
‘There’s been a suicide.’
‘Wow. A boy?’
‘Nope. One of the masters.’
‘Ah.’ DS Jones ponders for a
moment. ‘That’s almost as bad in the publicity stakes. Gruesome?’
‘She doesn’t say – except that he
drowned.’ Skelgill sounds a touch exasperated. ‘Why the heck does
she want me to follow up a suicide? Either it is or it isn’t.’
‘Her son’s a pupil there, you know?’
Skelgill sits upright, more circumspectly
now. This piece of news might in part explain his summons. ‘I
didn’t. How come you do?’
‘My Aunt Emily – she works there in
the personnel department.’
Skelgill looks thoughtful. ‘Do they
have
them
at schools – personnel departments, I mean?’
‘It’s private, Guv. They can have
anything they like.’
He nods. ‘I suppose so. Not
my strong suit. When I was a kid we played football, they played
rugby. They didn’t mix with the local comp.’
‘They only compete against the other
private boarding schools.’
‘You’re a mine of information, DS Jones.’
‘I could certainly get us an inside track,
Guv. There’s no great love lost between the ancillary staff and the rest.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘
Upstairs, Downstairs
kind of
thing. The common room is ninety percent Oxbridge, and half the boys are
minor royalty or the sons of international billionaires. They’ve got
Mexicans, Russians, Chinese.’
Skelgill grins ruefully. ‘Could get
interesting on parents’ evening. The cartels meet the mafia meet the
triads, eh?’
‘I don’t think it’s quite reached those
proportions, Guv. The new head’s apparently a throwback to the days of
the Empire – a stickler for all things pukka. Cold showers and
stiff upper lip. You’d better wear a tie, Guv.’
Skelgill seems lost in momentary
reverie. ‘Sorry?’
‘When we go down to the school in the
morning – you ought to wear a tie. I take it we’re meeting the
Head?’
A pained expression takes hold of
Skelgill’s features, their creases made more sinister by the dim lights and shadowy
deep crimson velvet backdrop of the restaurant.
‘That’s the bad news, Jones.’
‘You don’t have a tie?’ DS Jones
sounds unsurprised.
Skelgill licks his lips as if his mouth
has suddenly become dry. ‘No, it’s not that – I’m talking
about the Chief’s email. DS Leyton’s back from leave. Appears he’s
done the initial groundwork. I’m to meet him at Keswick and go on to the school.
You’re to report at county HQ for your next assignment.’
LAKE
It is raining steadily as Skelgill rows with
deceptive economy in a southerly direction, some thirty yards out from the leafy
osiers lining the east bank of Bassenthwaite Lake. At just before six a.m.
he’s the only soul on the water, though its protected conservation status and secluded
character ensure a minimum of human interference at most times of day.
The Lake District’s only ‘lake’ (as Skelgill is wont to point out to bemused
visitors) lies in quiet contrast to the likes of Windermere and Derwentwater,
which on Bank Holidays boil with the flailing oars and over-revved outboards of
an unseaworthy fleet of day-trippers.
Skelgill, however, holds the requisite
fishing and boat permits: those in authority are content to have him prowling
on their behalf, albeit at the hidden price of the odd salmon or sea trout that
finds its way into his freezer. Not that Skelgill is a game fisher.
His obsession is the pike: a catch-and-return species. He holds the unofficial
top weight for the water and is convinced a monster British record not only
haunts its depths, but on three occasions has ‘snapped him up’; fishing
parlance for one that gets away, tackle and all.
Today, however, pike are not the target.
Instead a whippy twelve-foot perch rod trails prominently from the stern.
This would tell the seasoned Skelgill-watcher that, while he’s clad for the occasion
in a weather-beaten
Barbour
outfit, he’s not fishing seriously –
at best he’s stalking bait. In fact, the rod is strictly for appearances,
and his mission is one of reconnaissance.
His boat slides near-silently across the silvery
mere. The faint swish and splash of his oars harmonises with the
pervasive sibilance that is the hiss of millions of raindrops entering the
water, pitting its surface with an ever-changing yet homogenous tessellation.
He rests mid-stroke, pausing to shake off beads of sweat mingled with rain that
drip from his eyebrows and nose. The heatwave might have ended, but the relative
humidity must be close on a hundred. High above, to his left, Skiddaw’s
vast grey-green bulk may no longer exist; even its little outrider, Dodd, is
blanketed in mist, signalling to Skelgill that the cloud base is well below
fifteen-hundred feet; a thousand, at best. Only the whitewashed
Bishop
of Barf
, a pale smudge over on the afforested western flanks, is visible of
the customary landmarks. Typical Lakeland summer weather has returned.
Skelgill espies the first neatly painted
sign that proclaims, beneath a crest in the shape of an acorn, ‘Private
Property – Keep Out’. There’s smaller lettering beyond the limits
of his vision – no doubt it warns, ‘Trespassers will be
prosecuted’. He stares intensely, as though he objects to the concept:
they’ve effectively abolished private land up in Scotland, and such egalitarian
rights of access appeal to his fierce sense of fairness. It’s the source
of long-running beer-fuelled dispute with one of his gamekeeper pals, though in
a more reflective moment Skelgill would be forced to concede there’s a flipside
in the exclusion of the ignorant excesses that some townsfolk persist in
bringing to England’s green and pleasant land.
Now he hauls in the oars, glancing
shoreward as their hollow dunk against the hull threatens to announce his
presence. But there’s no one abroad at this hour, never mind in this
weather. He straightens out the creases in an ancient stained bush hat
and improves his disguise substantially. Without bothering to bait the
hook, he deftly flicks out the line from his perch rod, engages the bale arm,
and assumes the position of an angler concentrating upon his float. The
boat drifts slowly, parallel to the bank, its residual momentum conveniently assisted
by the faintest of northerly breezes. The air movement is insufficient,
however, to disperse the midges that have been trailing him, and which now move
in for a feed. He rummages for repellent in a rusty tin of miscellaneous
tackle, but to no avail; he must resign himself to an uncomfortable vigil.
What he can learn, however, is a matter
for conjecture. Oakthwaite School stands on a blunt peninsula of
gradually rising ground half a mile from Bassenthwaite Lake. Its watery
margins are defended by a rocky shoreline bordered by marshy scrub, and are not
a place to make landfall. The main edifice is invisible from the lake,
being set in heavily wooded parkland; only the white tips of rugby posts and
match-day hoorays give a clue to what goes on within.