When the detectives were gone, Chas put his head down upon his arms and finally allowed himself to weep, giving way to an anguish that had taken root from the seeds of his betrayal of his brother, that had blossomed with his loss of Sissy, that had borne fruit—bitter and malformed—in the last eight days of his life.
He had been trying to write about it, instinctively seeking a purgation of the spirit through the means of verse. He had excelled at that once, had littered the surface of his desk with countless poetic panegyrics to and for and about Sissy. But the agonies of the last few days—in conjunction with the torments that had howled in single-minded pursuit of him for more than a year—had silenced that interior voice which had soared within him, which had once so fired his soul and fueled his passion to write. There were no more words that could diminish a suffering which had become such an all-consuming presence in his life that it appeared to have neither alpha nor omega. It was a wretchedness that was monstrous in form, reaching out to attach itself to everything that brushed near the periphery of his life.
How convenient it had been to turn away from Preston, to excuse his abandonment of his brother by declaring it necessary to the salvation of his family’s name. But the reality was that in proving himself not only fallible but also deeply troubled, Preston had fallen from the older-brother pedestal upon which Chas had placed him, and his own pride was wounded at having been duped by the guise of guilelessness that his brother had worn. So he had refused to speak to him once the charges were verified. He had refused to see him on his last morning at the school. He had refused to answer the single letter Preston wrote him. He had refused most of all to see a connection between this rejection of his brother and the fact that Preston had gone to Scotland and not returned.
In losing his brother, he had turned to Sissy, making her the vital force through which his blood flowed. In seven months she had grown from his schoolgirl friend, to the single safest harbour for his thoughts, to the inspiration of his writing, to the burning obsession that dominated every moment he did not spend in her company. But like his brother, Sissy was gone, destroyed by his selfishness and need, crushed by the force of an impetuosity that he had neither the sense nor the desire to control.
And hadn’t that same impetuosity driven the machinery of Matthew Whateley’s death? For without a second thought, he had played the tape for Clive Pritchard—he had even taken a secret satisfaction at the expression of astonishment on Clive’s face when he realised he had actually been bettered by a little third former who should have been nothing more than an inconsequential ant beneath his feet. He had so enjoyed Clive’s reaction that his own face had been momentarily—and fatally—unguarded when the other boy demanded the name of the tape’s creator, guessing Matthew Whateley within the first four boys mentioned. So he himself had inadvertently given Matthew over to Clive. He himself had set the deadly wheels in motion.
Ultimately, they were all connected: his brother, Sissy, Matthew, Clive. He was the sickness that had infected them all. There was only one cure. He feared it. He lacked the will, the courage, and the backbone to do it. He despised himself for his days of indecision, for his lack of resolve in carrying it out. But beyond a doubt he knew what it was.
Clive Pritchard had turned his bed-sitting room in Calchus House into a shrine to James Dean. The actor’s likeness was everywhere: striding down a street in New York, hands shoved into his pockets, the collar of his jacket turned up against the cold; climbing an oil derrick in the motion picture Giant; cradling a dying Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause; posing beside the Porsche that killed him; staring moodily at the camera in a dozen different close-ups that had been cut from a calendar; smoking on the set of East of Eden. It was like being thrust suddenly into another country, into a time warp. Thirty years disappeared in an instant.
The room’s other decoration underlined this feeling. Old Coca-Cola bottles lined the windowsill beneath which stood a tattered vinyl stool that looked as if it had come from an old American diner. A chrome tabletop music selector perched on the desk along with three menus largely featuring hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, and milk shakes. On the bookshelves a pair of high-top black tennis shoes sat next to a small neon sign reading Coke.
The only anachronism—aside from a photograph of the rugby first fifteen and another of Clive in fencing regalia which were posted on the clothes cupboard—was a third photograph on the desk. In it, Clive posed with a terrified-looking elderly woman, his arm round her shoulders, his fingernails biting into her upper arm. He had shaved both sides of his head, leaving only a patch of hair down the middle. This was dyed blue and it stood up straight from his scalp in spikes. He was dressed in black, in an ensemble that comprised mostly leather and chains.
The contrast between that pictorial Clive Pritchard and the boy who came into the room in the company of the Headmaster was remarkable. Seeing him in his school clothes—his hair grown out and neatly combed, his shoes buffed, his pullover and trousers and shirt spotless—it was difficult for Lynley to believe that he was the same boy in the photograph.
Having the identity of the bully on Matthew Whateley’s tape established conclusively through the words of Chas Quilter, having been given the additional information regarding the chamber above the drying room in Calchus House, Alan Lockwood had not hesitated to act. With Lynley and Havers in his office, he had placed a call to Northern Ireland, where Clive Pritchard’s father—a career army colonel—had been stationed for the past eighteen months. His message to Colonel Pritchard was brief enough. Clive had been expelled from Bredgar Chambers. It was the Headmaster’s decision. The Board of Governors would be informed. Because of the circumstances, there would be no court of appeal. If the colonel would be so good as to send a family member…
There was a lengthy pause in which both Lynley and Havers could hear a sharp voice raised on the other end of the line. Lockwood quelled it with a sharpness of his own when he broke into Colonel Pritchard’s protest with, “A boy’s been murdered. Clive’s problems at the moment extend far beyond expulsion, believe me.” That responsibility taken care of, he directed Lynley and Havers to Clive’s room and went in search of the boy himself.
Clive saw that Lynley was looking at the photograph, and he grinned in response to the expression on Lynley’s face. “Me and Gran,” he said. “Can’t say she thought much of the mohawk.” He sat on the edge of the bed, yanked off his pullover, and began to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. The soft inner flesh of his left arm was disfigured by a tattoo, a misshapen skull and crossbones that looked as if it had been created by a penknife and india ink. “Wizard, isn’t it?” Clive asked when he saw that Lynley had noticed the tattoo. “Always had to keep it covered here at school. But I’ve found the ladies go rather hot for it. You know the sort of thing.”
“Roll the shirt sleeve down, Pritchard,” Lockwood said. “Now.” The Headmaster looked as if he smelled something foul. He crossed the room, unhooked the window, and thrust it open.
“One-two. Tha’s it, Locky. Breathe,” Clive Pritchard mocked as Lockwood stood before the open space. He left his shirt sleeves as they were.
“Sergeant,” Lynley said to Havers, ignoring the exchange between the boy and the Headmaster.
From years of saying it, Havers went through the routine of the caution by rote. Clive would not be obliged to say anything to them unless he wished to do so, but whatever he said might be put into writing and given in evidence against him.
Clive feigned surprised confusion at this, but his eyes couldn’t hide the fact that he understood the meaning behind those few official words. “Wha’s this?” he asked them. “Mr. Lockwood comes personally to fetch me from music—directly in the middle of my sax solo, by the way; I find the coppers in my bed-sit ogling my gran’s picture; and now I’m hearing the official caution.” He extended his foot, hooked it under the rung of the chair, and pulled it from beneath the desk. “Take a load off, Inspector. Or perhaps that expression would b
e better applied to the sergeant here.”
“Of all the blasted cheek…” Lockwood seemed at a loss for anything further to say to the boy.
Clive cocked a head at him but he spoke to Lynley, his questions deliberately ingenuous. “Why’s he here, anyway? What’s this to do with Morant?”
“Judge’s Rules,” Lynley replied.
“Rules about what?”
“Questioning suspects.”
Clive’s earlier smile of innocence disappeared. “You’re not here about…All right, the Headmaster played me the tape. I’ve heard it. So I’m out on my ear and there’ll be hell to pay with my dad, that’s for sure. But that’s it. Just a bit of rough-and-tumble with Harry Morant. He was a cheeky bloke. He needed a bit of straightening out. But that was the extent of it.”
Sergeant Havers was bent over the desk, writing. When Clive paused, she reached blindly for the chair, sat down, and continued. At the window, Lockwood folded his arms. Lynley spoke.
“How often do you visit the Sanatorium, Clive?”
“Sanatorium?” Clive repeated. He sounded nonplussed, but the repetition bought him time. “No more than anyone else.”
It was a non-answer. Lynley pressed on. “But you know about the off-games chits.”
“What about them?”
“Where they’re kept. What they’re used for.”
“Everyone knows that.”
“You’ve used them yourself, no doubt. Perhaps on a day when you didn’t want to go to games. Perhaps when you had something more important to do, like an exam to study for, a paper to write, prep to see to.”
“What if I did? That’s nothing different from what half the blokes in upper sixth are up to. Go to the San. Dandle Laughland for a quarter-hour. Look a bit lovesick over her for good measure. Pick up a chit. It happens every day, Inspector.” He grinned, as if developing renewed confidence. “Are you going to have the sergeant give the caution to everyone who’s done it? You’ll be here for a while if that’s your game.”
“So the chits are fairly easy to come by.”
“If you know what you’re about.”
“Blank chits as well? Chits that Mrs. Laughland hasn’t filled out yet or signed?”
Clive looked at his hands, picked deeply at the cuticle of his right index finger. He said nothing.
“Pritchard…” Lockwood said his name as an admonition. Clive’s answering look was a study in contempt.
“Those blank chits are easy to come by, aren’t they?” Lynley asked. “Especially if Mrs. Laughland is distracted at the moment by one of the other boys. Dandling her, as you said. So I imagine you took one of the off-games chits from her desk—perhaps more than one if the plan didn’t work out the first time through.”
“This is daft,” Clive responded. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What plan? Whose plan?”
“The plan to nab Matthew Whateley.”
Clive gave a short laugh. “You’re pinning that on me? Have a go with it, Inspector, but it won’t get you far.”
In spite of himself, Lynley admired the boy’s nerve. Aside from the occasional physical reaction that gave evidence of information withheld, Clive was practically impenetrable, a fencer in more ways than one. Lynley decided to try a more direct approach.
“I disagree,” he said. “Pinning it on you will take me right to the end, Clive.”
The boy snorted derisively and went back to his cuticles.
“Here’s how I imagine you did it. Once you had the chit, you filled it out with Matthew Whateley’s name and placed it in Mr. Pitt’s pigeonhole so he wouldn’t expect to see the boy at games that afternoon. Then directly after lunch, you picked up Matthew. I should guess you ambushed him on his way to Erebus House to change into his games clothes. You hid out long enough for the other students to be off at games. Then you took him to the chamber above the drying room before going off to games yourself. You tortured him through most of Friday night while the rest of the students were busy elsewhere, or home for the weekend, or at the sixth form social club where you had put in an obligatory appearance. When the fun was over, you killed him.”
Clive rolled down the sleeves of his shirt. He buttoned them and reached for his pullover. “You’re crazy.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Pritchard,” Lockwood said. “Regardless of this”—he flung his hand in Lynley’s direction—“you’re confined to your room until someone from your family arrives and takes you off my hands. Provided the police don’t wish to do so immediately.”
The Headmaster’s curt dismissal of him seemed to snap the boy. “Oh, right! Too right!” he exploded. “I’m expelled over a little push and shove. Where were the bloody rules when I was third form? Who gave a shit that I—”
“That’s enough!”
“No, it isn’t enough! It bloody well isn’t. Because I took my knocks, see? And I didn’t peep about it. Not to my mates. Not to anyone. I just took it.”
“And waited to pass it on to someone else when you had the chance?” Lockwood demanded.
“What if I did? It was my right!”
Lynley saw how the boy was manoeuvring them away from Matthew Whateley. It was expertly done, a conversational legerdemain worthy of a man twice his age.
“How did you kill him, Clive?” Lynley asked. “Give him something to drink? Something special to eat?”
“Kill? Morant’s alive! I never…” His face empurpled. “You think I killed Whateley? Whoever told…” His head turned in the direction of Ion House, just visible through the trees outside his window. “Son of a bitch!” Still seated on the bed, he whirled towards Lynley. “You’ve sussed it out, haven’t you? So tell me how I did it. How’d I get the body up to Stoke Poges? Sleight-of-hand?” He laughed and jumped to his feet, curving his hand round an imaginary microphone. “What about this? ‘Beam him over to Buckinghamshire, Scottie.’ Think that would have worked?”
“Not at all,” Lynley replied. “But I think it would have worked easily enough to break into the porter’s office in the east quad, to take the keys to one of the minibuses from behind the counter where they’re hanging in plain sight, and to use that to transport Matthew’s body to Stoke Poges on Saturday night while the porter was off seeing to his daughter. It was probably quite late when the bus was taken. Probably the early hours of Sunday morning when it was returned.”
Clive laughed again, his fisted hands on his hips. “Lovely. Really fine. There’s only one problem. I wasn’t here Saturday night, Inspector. I was in Cissbury. Having it on with a nice little piece I picked up in the village. Once in the bus shelter and twice more in the car park next to the pub. The last was after time was called. Ask the barman. He found us by the rubbish bin.” Clive grinned and made a rude gesture with his hands. “She wanted it standing up on the last go-round. So we were leaning against the bin when the barman came out. Just ask him what he saw when he came to dump the night’s rubbish. Quite an eyeful he got. An earful as well, ’cause she was yowling like a pig every time I stuck her.”
“If you expect us to believe—”
Clive cut off Lockwood’s words. “I don’t care what you believe. I’m out of here anyway. And glad to be gone.” In a step he was at his desk, and he jerked open a drawer. He pulled out a notebook and flung it on the desk. A set of photographs slid out halfway. They were singed round the edges. “Take a look at those, if you’re so hot and heavy after Matt Whateley’s killer,” he said. “I didn’t nab him, I didn’t torture him, I didn’t kill him. But I sure as hell can tell you who did.”
Lynley lifted the pictures. He felt revulsion seep through his skin. “Where did you get these?”
Clive’s smile was triumphant, as if he’d waited for this moment and now that it had arrived he intended to savour it. “Found them on the rubbish pile Saturday night,” he replied. “Just as I came over the wall on the return from Cissbury. Sweet Mistress Bond—Bredgar’s Queen of Chemistry—was trying to burn the lot of them.”
Sergeant Havers lit a cigarette without apology, and standing next to her, Lynley did not complain. They were in the council room across the corridor from the Headmaster’s study in the east quadrangle. Although the windows looked out upon the cloisters down which both students and staff members passed, their voices amplified by the vaulted ceiling, neither Lynley nor Havers gave them the slightest notice. Instead, their attention was riveted upon the set of photographs Clive Pritchard had given them.
“Holy heaven,” Havers said, mixing reverence with disgust. “I’ve seen…I mean, one can’t go forever in CID without coming across pornography, can one? So I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it, sir. But this…”
Lynley understood exactly what Havers meant. He, too, had seen his share of pornography, not only as a police officer but also as a curious pre-adolescent, eager to understand, if not to experience first-hand, the mysteries of adult sexuality. Grainy photographs of men and women coupling for cameras in a variety of postures had always been obtainable if one had the money to pay for them. He could remember the guilty schoolboy giggling that accompanied a group perusal of such photographs, the sweat that smeared finger and palm prints across them, and the urgent self-grappling in the darkness that followed. Each boy wondered who would be his first woman and when it would happen and what it would mean if it didn’t happen soon.
As unsavoury as those photographs had been with their bleach-haired women of sagging flesh and pockmarked men mounting them with grimaces of feigned pleasure, they were mild and innocuous compared with what lay before Lynley and Havers on the conference table. These photographs addressed themselves to more than mere voyeurism. Both the subjects and the poses in which they had been captured served as a titillation that was masochistic in origin and clearly paedophilic in design.
Well-Schooled in Murder Page 34
