One Last Lesson (21 page)

To assist
in the recovery process, the hospital was providing a nurse who would visit on a daily basis for one week or two and dress her wounds and he would do his best to get over to Hove as often as possible. It wouldn’t be easy as he usually arrived in the office before seven-thirty and went home after nine and some days he wouldn’t even be in the area, but he would find a way, because if it was only his sleep and leisure time that were impacted, it would be a small price to pay.

On balance,
Rachel’s fourth-floor flat in a purpose-built apartment block in Hove was a better bet than his place in Seven Dials. Her building was equipped with a bank of lifts that worked and most of the fittings and appliances had been replaced or refurbished in the last six months, just before she moved in. Whereas at Chez Henderson, the moody washing machine only completed a cycle if there was a full moon and the noise the fridge made was capable of drowning out the rumble of traffic on the road outside.

He eased her into the car with more care than he would
with a handcuffed suspect and while he waited for her to get comfortable, realised that any trip out to the shops, the pub or the cinema would be a major undertaking and take just as long as it did when his own kids were small, and to think he once believed he would never have to face that again.

He pulled out of the
hospital car park and was soon driving down Eastern Road towards the Steine. ‘I think we’ll do the seafront this morning and behave like tourists. It’ll be easier on your leg, without all that turning and braking if we go the back way.’

‘
Thank you but I blame the driver. You drive this thing like a bus, get out my way everybody, I’m coming through.’

‘
Listen to you, the one who’s just written off a new car! And don’t forget, this ‘bus’ will be your transport for the foreseeable, so show more humility. That is, of course until such times as you’re fit enough to drive again and can afford to buy a new car.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

‘What? You’re just out of hospital after a car accident and you’re still thinking about buying a new car? It’s a bike you should be thinking about or a bus season ticket, not another car.’

‘Hear me out, Angus. I’ve decided
it’s about time I gave up two-seater sports cars and bought something sensible.’

‘Hey did you see that!’

‘What? I didn’t see anything.’

‘
Over there, I can see a flock of flying pigs.’

‘Daft idiot, but I mean it.’

‘Hallelujah, sense at last. Hang on though, I know that face. There’s a catch, with you there’s always a catch.’

‘Well, I
obviously couldn’t go for the basic model with an eleven hundred cc engine or something with six seats, now could I? When I say I want something sensible, I mean it could be a hatchback but it has to be a bit nippier than normal, like a Renault Sport, a Mini Cooper or maybe the Seat Leon Cupra.’

He shook his head but said nothing.
She was just like his now-dead grandmother, a nice old lady but a stoic and stubborn brute, as nothing he could ever say would force her to change her mind even when they both knew she was wrong about something.

Ashdown, h
er apartment block in Hove was filled with professional types who enjoyed living close to the cricket ground, pubs, restaurants and the seafront, and with an easy walk up to Hove railway station for the daily commute to London, which was required to pay for it all. She hobbled gamely through the entrance and into the lift and they reached her floor without incident but when they got to the door of her flat, her face was red and her breath came out in short gasps, and all she wanted to do now was collapse on the settee.

She spent
a few minutes recovering before she said, ‘hold your horses Angus Henderson, I do believe you’ve tidied up, or maybe it was my mother.’

‘Cheeky ma
dam,’ he said sitting down beside her, ‘it was me, in my spare time.’

‘Oh you poor thing,’ she leaned over and gave him a hug and a kiss, ‘and you in the middle of a big murder enquiry and all. How’s
all that going?’

‘Badly I would say.’

He gave her a summary of the case, snippets of which she must have heard already while lying in her hospital bed, and told her what little they knew about the latest victim. When they started going out together, he was acutely aware of the place where she worked, albeit in the gentler pastures of countryside and environmental matters, and not with the hungry vultures in daily news, but he said little about his work as no matter how assiduous she was at keeping secrets, there were plenty in her office that were highly skilled at extracting information from the most unresponsive witnesses.

‘You’ve got to feel for their parents. You think when you’re sending your kids to university, it's a safe place and they’ll come back with a degree and not
a death certificate.’ She put a hand on his leg but alas, it was not as a sign of affection but an aid to help her to stand. ‘Let me make you a nice cup of tea.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it.’

‘Stop right there, Henderson.’ She twisted round to face him, her face firm and resolute. ‘Let’s lay some ground rules here. I’m not an invalid but an able-bodied person who’s temporarily incapacitated, and as such, I’ll determine the things I can and can’t do. When I say, I’ll make you a cup of tea, I’ll do it, so please don’t volunteer to do it for me, ok? Now help me up.’

She hobbled to the kitchen without fal
ling over, which surprised him, as he didn’t think the crutch would find much traction on the polished wooden floor, while was following at a safe distance, safe from any accusations of interference and watched as she opened the fridge.

‘Oh my God, its full! Oh you lovely man. When did you do all this?’

‘It was nothing. I work beside a supermarket, don’t I?’

He stopped speaking as she moved towards him and warm lips enveloped his mouth and a heavier than normal
Rachel slipped her arms around his neck, the crutches falling uselessly to the floor.

‘I’m not so incapacitated,’ she said into his ear, ‘that we couldn’t go to bed for a few hours.’

He thought for a moment and his first reaction was no, he needed to get back, there were people to see, jobs to do, but hey, they could manage without him for a spell. Instead he said, ‘are you sure it’s ok?’

‘Yep,’ she said breathlessly.

‘Do I need to carry you?’

Jon Lehman was still troubled by the visit of
DS Hobbs and DC Young the previous day. Not that he was guilty of anything, so they couldn’t fit him up, even if they still did that sort of thing. His alibi was cast iron and there wasn’t a bone in his body that wanted to harm any of these girls. Why would he try to destroy something that was making him a mint and provided him with girls who occasionally invited him back to their place for a great night of fun, frolics and fantastic sex?

He walked to the filing cabinet and fished out a bottle of vodka, purchased that morning
from a local shop with a copy of the Guardian, and poured a large slug into a paper cup. He sat back in the chair, lifted the cup to his lips and took a big gulp.

Certainly, that was how Gree
n saw it, a moneymaking machine, a golden goose that laid golden eggs and would continue to do so as long as there was a bone in his body and ammunition in his weapon. Only last week, they were summoned to Langley Manor once again, like disloyal serving staff, caught dipping their fingers in the biscuit tin, only to listen to him while he fumed and flared and paced the room like a Pamplona bull eager for the off, as he was utterly convinced there was some bastard out there, determined to bring him down. Oh, how he wished it be so, because as much as he was integral in setting up the business and making it a success, his obsession with protecting his own arse, regardless of the feelings of everyone else, was now getting on everybody’s wick, especially his.

In his opinion, the man
was way off beam as there were easier ways of getting back at him, as he said himself, he took a regular Sunday morning walk along the seafront in Brighton, he dined once a month with the Mayor and other town dignitaries in English’s Seafood Restaurant in East Street in the Lanes, and if that was too difficult, his two daughters were well-known students at Brighton College, a top fee-paying prep school in the Kemptown area of Brighton.

Once again, he demanded to know if he or Stark knew of any enemies, as he was desperate to pay them a visit and dole out vengeful violence
on their persons if they could produce even a modicum of suspicion. He said he was already been making his own enquiries but despite spilling much blood and breaking a few bones, he still didn’t have what he wanted. The thought of Green and his cronies, charging around the countryside, like a medieval band of witch hunters, meting out justice without recourse to the law or upholding the age-old principle of presumed innocence, filled him with dread.

He was sorely tempted to spout out the name
s of all the people he detested, like a sixteenth century farmhand whose head was being thrust into a barrel of dirty water after he was caught masturbating, and then freely naming all his neighbours and relatives as co-conspirators in this evil deed. Into his head popped Professor Robert McLagan, the laird of all he surveyed, and master-in-chief of spouting crap in a public place. The thought of that pompous Scottish git nursing a broken face and shattered vertebrae, held together by a neck and back brace and confining him to a wheelchair for six months, almost made him smile but instead, he maintained a sombre expression and shook his head to indicate there was no one.

Lehman always admired Alan Stark for his sense of timing, being able to say the right thing at the perfect moment, but his touch deserted him that night when he suggested to Green that they should take down the site, at least until the heat cooled down.

Green rounded on him, his face dark and malicious, daring him to say more.

‘How the fuck can you suggest that?’ He shouted. ‘We’ve been doing so brilliant these last few months, only a fucking idiot would want to jeopardize that.’

Green paced the room as if on speed and Lehman would not have been surprised if he suddenly produced a big hunting knife and rammed it into Alan Stark’s chest, such was his anger. A few nervous minutes passed, waiting like extermination camp prisoners, wondering if a recalcitrant hair on their head or an errant furrow of the brow would attract the attention of the commandant and invite him to bash their brains in with the heavy cudgel he carried.

Instead, he suddenly became mellow and conciliatory.

‘I understand why you would suggest that Alan and I would support you all the way, if I believed it would do any good, but as I said before, this killer has already fleshed out his plans and doesn’t need the web site running to help him.’

Stark, his need for self-preservation greater than his need to make a point,
might have gone on to say that he wasn’t asking him to close it down to thwart the killer, but as a mark of respect for the dead, but sensibly he kept his trap shut.

There was a time
when he liked the university’s vice-chancellor, Robert Donahue but a private meeting two days ago put paid to all that. Donahue informed him that rumours were reaching his ears that he was part owner of a porn web site and most damning of all, in his estimation, girls from the university were appearing on it. He denied it but was told the university were launching an investigation to establish the facts and if substantiated, he said in that plummy, grating voice he used for carpeting drug-takers or anyone damaging university property, he would have no alternative but to dismiss him.

He was stunned by the news, especially as he
was expecting the meeting to be about his long-awaited promotion, at least that was how he interpreted the phone call, billed as a review of ‘his current position at the university.’ He was also stunned because it wasn’t until that moment he realised how much the place meant to him. It wasn’t just a job or even a vocation; it was a way of life, his whole being. He ate there, worked there, wrote there, drank there, met women there and often slept there, and even before his wife threw him out, often preferred staying there to going home.

His wife threw him out
after he arrived home late last Friday night, or technically Saturday morning, following a drunken binge. It started as usual in the bar, then into the main hall to watch a band called Strategic Air Cover before heading off to a party in one of the halls of residence, where he found himself in bed with a gorgeous girl who wasn’t even a student at the university. When he finally woke up, late on Saturday afternoon with a bad hangover, unbeknown to his befuddled brain, he was sporting something on his neck and on the inside of his left thigh, regions where last night Tania, Tamara or Teresa, he couldn’t remember her name, was doing utterly amazing things with her tongue, lips and teeth.

It was a love-bite f
or Christ sake! Two to be exact, something not suffered since high school. His wife saw it before he could dress and put on the polo neck he was holding, which he dropped after she went ballistic and punched him in the face. He heard little of the screaming attack but enough to understand his current behaviour was simply a microcosm of all the innuendo, gossip and advice of her well-meaning friends, who were continually warning her that her husband was a first-class philanderer and she would be better off without him.