Mortal Taste (15 page)

‘What was your own relationship with him?' Those grey, unblinking eyes seemed to reinforce the directness of the approach.

Steve tried to seem as open and uncomplicated in his reply. ‘We got on very well. I'm not an educationist, but I listened and learned. What Peter said usually made sense, and I saw my job as encouraging the governors of his school to provide the necessary backing. I like to think we made an effective partnership.'

‘So why did you resign?'

‘Personal reasons. Nothing to do with what has happened to Peter now.' The man had taken him by surprise. Steve felt that he should not have answered so huffily, that he was making more of the resignation than he should have, drawing attention to the matter.

‘Mr Fenton, we are just trying to build up a picture of a man who has been brutally killed. You're helping us quite voluntarily: I can't insist that you answer, but I'd prefer to make up my own mind on what's relevant.'

‘I had a business to run. Still have. A small engineering firm. We only employ ten people, so I need to be hands-on.'

‘I see. But you felt able to accept the chairmanship in the first place?'

Steve wished he hadn't prevaricated. It was making him seem evasive when he'd really no need to be. The chairmanship of the governors wasn't really all that time-consuming: he wondered how much these men knew about it. ‘I'd done my stint. Been Chair for over two years. I felt my business was suffering a little. And I've children in the school. There could have been a clash of interests.' He wished he'd used that argument to start with; it sounded more convincing in his own ears when he produced it now.

‘So there was nothing more personal than that involved? There were no arguments between you and Mr Logan?'

‘No. Peter and I got on very well.' He forced himself to look into those grey eyes which studied him so relentlessly, trying but failing to think of a little quip which might lighten the atmosphere.

‘And that was still the case at the time of his death?'

He wondered who these men had been talking to, whether they treated everyone as if they had been an enemy of the dead man. ‘Yes. Peter and I still had a very good professional relationship. We didn't see quite as much of each other after I ceased to be Chairman, but we—'

‘Forgive me, but you have again laid stress on that word “professional”. I am interested in more personal relationships.'

How sharp the man was! And how much did he know? Steve felt himself floundering. ‘We got on well enough. I don't suppose we had a lot in common, outside our interest in the school. And the school was Peter's life, of course. He put in long hours—'

‘So you didn't associate much socially?'

‘No. We probably hadn't a lot in common, as I say.'

‘Though you both had children in the school, and a common interest in the excellent education it was providing.' Lambert nodded a couple of times, inviting Steve to comment, but this time he had the sense to keep his lips tightly shut. ‘Would you say that Mr Logan had a happy home life?'

Steve was stiff with caution by now. ‘I've no reason to think he didn't.'

‘I speak in confidence, of course, but I think I can tell you that Mrs Logan intimated that in her view Mr Logan was a better headmaster than he was a husband.'

‘That – that is surprising, but it may well have been so. I told you, we didn't associate much outside the school.'

‘So you would hardly know Mrs Logan?'

‘I've met her, at school functions.'

‘That's hardly what I asked.'

‘I've met her a few times, with Peter. She seems a very pleasant woman. She manages a florist's in the town, I'm told, but I've never been into the shop. And I think she teaches part-time at the College of Technology.'

Steve resolutely refused to elaborate in the long pause which followed. He had given up trying to look into those grey eyes, which seemed to peer into his very soul. He began to study a scratch on the surface of his dining table which he had never noticed before.

Eventually, Lambert said quietly, ‘Where were you on Monday evening, Mr Fenton?'

‘Here. From six thirty onwards.' His answer had come too quickly on the heels of the question, without any pause at all. He knew it as he spoke; told himself desperately that they couldn't make anything out of it.

‘Was anyone with you for all or part of the evening?'

‘No.' He'd waited a little longer before he answered this time. ‘There's no reason why there should be, is there? I'm divorced. I live alone.'

‘Indeed. It would have been useful from our point of view if someone had been with you, that's all.'

He hadn't said why he'd asked, thought Steve. The bugger was enjoying letting him work it out for himself, seeing him suffer. Well, he wasn't going to add any more. He had learned this morning that adding to your answers only made things worse, when you were lying.

He looked up. Lambert was still studying his every tiny reaction with that steady, unembarrassed stare. ‘Have you any idea who killed Peter Logan, Mr Fenton?'

‘None whatsoever.'

‘Do you know anyone who had a reason to dislike him?'

‘No. I told you. He was highly successful in what he did.'

‘Indeed you did tell us that. More than once. But success does not always make people likeable, does it?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘Did you ever hear that Mr Logan was something of a philanderer?'

What an old-fashioned word, thought Steve. He'd heard Logan called several things, had used some of the words himself, but never that one. He said stiffly, ‘I didn't listen to gossip.'

‘An admirable policy. But you can't help hearing things, sometimes. And, unlike you, he wasn't a free agent in these things.'

Steve almost blurted out a response he would immediately have regretted. This man was baiting him: he realized that now. No doubt they used anger to make people reveal things. Well, it wouldn't work with him. ‘No. He was on the surface a happily married man. He'd a lot to lose. People expect a headmaster to be a pillar of respectability.'

‘So he would have wanted to be secretive about any affair he conducted. But you don't know of any such clandestine association?'

‘No. Well, I heard the odd rumour. But I told you, I didn't listen to gossip.'

‘A pity, that, from our point of view. It means you probably have no idea whom he might have been planning to meet on the night he died.'

‘No. I can't help you there.'

‘Do you know where Mrs Logan was on that night?'

Steve seemed suddenly to have lost all his breath, like a boxer struck without warning below the belt. He wondered if his face showed how shaken he was. He tried to keep his voice steady as he said, ‘No, of course I don't. Why do you want to know?'

The long, lined face on the other side of the table smiled for the first time in many minutes, amused by his naivety. ‘Routine, Mr Fenton. The spouse is always a leading suspect in a murder case, until she's cleared. So far we haven't been able to establish exactly where Mrs Logan was on Monday night. It would have been useful if you could have helped us and her. But it was a foolish question really. Because as you say, you hardly know the lady.'

‘No. My gut feeling is that she had nothing to do with her husband's death.'

‘I see. Well, Sergeant Hook can hardly record gut feelings in his notes. He has to stick to facts, you see. And I've no doubt he's recorded that you didn't know Mr Logan very well, that you know his wife even less well, that you've no idea whom he might have been sleeping with at the time of his death. All negatives, but all no doubt very useful in their own way. All contributing to a fuller picture, when we put them together with what other people have to tell us.'

‘Yes. I'm sorry I haven't been able to be more helpful.'

‘Oh, it may be that you've been more helpful than you think at this moment, when we review the whole of our knowledge rather than the parts. I should remind you before we leave that if anything occurs to you which you think might be significant in the investigation, it is your duty to get in touch with us immediately. But no doubt you would wish to do that anyway!'

Almost before he had realized it, they had gone. It was a bright, pleasant autumn day outside, but Steve found his torso clammy with perspiration beneath his shirt.

It was a good five minutes before he recovered enough to go to the phone.

Mark Lindsay's mother wanted to know why he was going out. It seemed to him that he had to lie to everyone these days.

Saturday the third of October was one of those still, perfect autumn mornings, when the sun warmed the green land around Cheltenham after a cool start to the day, but Mark scarcely noticed the weather. His mind was teeming with too many other things and it even seemed hard work to turn the pedals of his bike.

Drugs trading wasn't proving the straightforward money-winner he had anticipated. And so far he didn't seem to be collecting the girls, which had been the object of the exercise. Indeed, one of the nicer girls from school, a fresh-faced blonde about whom he'd had some steamy erotic fantasies, had actually gone out of her way to come and talk to him in the club on the previous night, and he'd had to snub her. He hadn't meant to, but his social skills weren't up to turning a girl away without giving offence.

He'd had to get rid of her, because his supplier's ultimatum that he must shift more drugs was still strong in his mind, and he hadn't dared to forsake the opportunities of selling to talk to this friendly and delectable girl. Teething troubles, he told himself unconvincingly, as he rode his bike away from the town centre. In a few months, he'd have all the girls he could handle.

The man he now thought of as ‘the man in black' was there before him. In fact, he wore Levi denims and a roll-neck blue sweater this morning. It was the first time Mark had seen him during daylight hours, but within the walls of this derelict filling station there seemed only dimness, after the brilliance of the sun outside.

The man handed over the supplies they had agreed without a word. Even in this dingy setting, he wore sunglasses with small, very black lenses, so that you could not see his eyes. His hands were surprisingly small and his movements very swift. Mark realized for the first time that his supplier could be nervous, too. This drugs business might be lucrative, but it was less straightforward and more dangerous than Mark had thought it would be.

There was more cannabis than Mark wanted, more than he had been able to shift in the school and on the previous night at the club. There were also small quantities, no more than a couple of grams, of the white and brown powders Mark knew were cocaine and heroin, and also some small squares of what looked like blotting paper, which puzzled him.

‘LSD. Don't you even bloody recognize it?' said the man tersely. ‘You don't need to pay now. But I'll want the money next time.'

‘Sale or return?' said Mark. He tried to laugh and couldn't manage it.

‘You'll shift them and deliver the money for future supplies at our next meeting. That's the way my system works, son.'

They were almost the only words they exchanged. The man left first, easing his BMW from behind the ruined building with scarcely a sound, then roaring away swiftly into the distance.

Mark Lindsay left two minutes later, pedalling his bicycle in the opposite direction, back towards the centre of the town and his home. He tried to ride swiftly, but the tiny packages in the pockets of his anorak seemed to weigh him down.

Martin Sheene had been expecting the call for days, but it was still a shock when it came.

He had given his statement to the detective constable at the school, waiting his turn on the list with the other teachers. He'd said no more than he had to say, been non-committal, even bored, as he sought to emphasize that this was no more than a fulfilment of police routine.

The voice on the phone was curiously unthreatening. It had a thick local accent, Herefordshire or Gloucestershire. Not being a native of the area, Martin couldn't be sure which. It said, ‘We need to ask you a few questions about the death of your headmaster, Mr Sheene.'

‘You spoke to me at Greenwood School. Earlier in the week.'

‘You made a statement to one of our officers, yes. This is a follow-up interview.'

‘I can't think why you would need that. Is this happening to all the teachers who—'

‘We're within a couple of hundred yards of you now. We'll be there within two minutes.'

They hadn't asked whether it would be convenient. He said desperately, ‘Wouldn't this be better at the school? I could be there in half an hour. It would really suit me better to—'

‘We'll be with you almost immediately, sir. We'll provide evidence of identity, if you require it.'

There wasn't time to ditch anything. Martin snatched up a couple of videos and put them away in the rather shabby cupboard beside his bookshelves. Then the doorbell rang and his inquisitors were in the house, almost before he realized that they were over the threshold: the Superintendent Lambert who had addressed them at Greenwood on Wednesday evening and his sidekick, the detective sergeant with the weather-beaten face who had just spoken to him on the phone.

They looked around the room, with its shabby furniture which he had bought with the house and never bothered to replace, its window which stubbornly refused to open, even though the sun was pouring through it now. They didn't miss much, these two: probably part of their training to assess the important things about a place at a glance. But there surely wasn't much visible here that could damage him? Martin had to resist the sensation that they knew all about him already, that they could see through wooden facings and into cupboards and drawers.