‘Do you mean I asked a stupid question? Too general?’
‘No. I wondered how you would describe yourself. With one adjective.’
It was a party game. I don’t like them. But you should never alienate a source. ‘Curious,’ I said. ‘I’d call myself curious. I like to find things out.’
‘All right then. Rissington Abbey.’ He spoke deliberately. ‘I’d call it evil,’ he said.
I was rocked by the word. Evil. What sort of evil? ‘Explain,’ I said.
He paused again, for so long that I was about to prompt him. Then he went on, ‘I’ve no time for private schools at all,’ and I relaxed. If his objection was only ideological . . . He went on, ‘It’s a training ground for fascists. The boys wear paramilitary uniforms. They drill twice a day. They move between classes at the double. They salute the masters. They call the Headmaster “Major”.’
‘Is he a major?’
‘He was before he left the Army, but that’s not the point. Who’d want to run a school like that?’
‘An old buffer? Someone who needs a gimmick to keep problem boys in line? While they’re running and saluting, they can’t get into trouble.’ It didn’t seem like a school I’d pick for my own son but I could think of a gang of boys from the council estate where (most of the time) I’d spent my childhood, who would have been better occupied at Rissington Abbey. Several cats the gang had tortured to death would have agreed with me, not to mention my mate Michelle who never really got over her rape, and the OAPs who couldn’t afford steel shutters for their windows.
My scepticism was frustrating him. ‘I’m explaining it badly,’ he said. ‘It’s more like – a smell. A smell of evil. The place is rotten.’ He stubbed out one cigarette, lit another.
‘You didn’t give that impression in your coverage of Olivier’s death.’
‘I’ve got a living to earn. And I’ve no evidence. It’s just the smell. You can’t miss it.’
I listen to experts on their own subjects. I suppose a priest, even an ex-priest, is an expert on evil. ‘When did you first notice it?’ I said. ‘The evil. Was it the Headmaster, the place, what?’
‘I covered their sports day, a year ago. They had a celebrity guest. Ellis rang my editor, he sent me along to cover it. I spent the whole day there, hanging round watching the races and talking to the Ellises and the staff.’
He hadn’t answered me directly. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps his diagnosis of evil came from the earlier time when he was involved as a priest. ‘Sports day,’ I said. ‘Ummm. It wasn’t the celebrity guest, by any chance?’
‘Hardly. That was Peter Hayes, the fifteen-hundred metre runner. A very genuine, uncomplicated man.’
‘So the papers say.’
‘You don’t believe me about the evil.’
‘I don’t believe or not believe, yet. What you’ve told me isn’t precise enough; I can’t visualize it. You could mean you feel the place is badly run. You could mean it’s an unhappy school. You could mean one of the people there is evil, just one of them, not the whole place.’
I was a lot less sceptical than I’d have been a year ago, before my first investigation. Eventually, that had smelt to me of evil, but then it was a very tangible smell, of excrement and blood.
I pressed on, since he was silent. ‘On that sports day. You don’t remember Olivier, the boy who died, by any chance? He was quite a diver, wasn’t he? Did the sports include diving?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes. Everybody noticed him. A very – striking youth. Confident, and beautiful. And no, I’m not homosexual.’
His sexuality was nothing to me either way. I gave a sympathetically butch smile, and pressed on. ‘Did he seem happy, to you?’
‘I watched the boy diving. How could I tell if he was happy? He was pleased enough at winning. How else can I help you?’ he said abruptly, curling his fingers away from me again, so I couldn’t see his bloody nails.
Martin Kelly, a man with a problem. Probably any ex-priest had a problem. Had he lost his faith? Had he been chucked out? One day a faith, a purpose, a place to live, the next day a life to rebuild from the roots. And drinking diet Coke, and chain-smoking. I wondered if he was a dried-out alcoholic. Not that that need impair his testimony. It might explain his nails.
‘I could really do with any names and addresses of people connected with the school, however loosely, that I could talk to before going in there and seeing Geoffrey Ellis himself. Cleaning women, for instance, and the old lady you quoted in your inquest article, the one whose house Olivier was painting.’
He was looking at me. Not quite suspiciously. More assessingly. ‘And you want this as background for the programme you’re researching which is a character study of various heads?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you say so. I’d say you were interested in the boy Olivier.’
‘I’m interested in him too,’ I said. ‘Background. I want to get the whole picture.’
‘Ah.’ His eyes met mine again, then slid away, full of some knowledge I didn’t share. He might think the school smelt of evil but I thought he smelt of loneliness and pain, and I’m an expert on that.
‘I’ll give you this,’ he said, and snapped open his briefcase. It was full of notebooks. That took me aback, even more than his statement about the school being evil. Why on earth would a reporter carry his dead notes about with him?
He selected two notebooks and flipped back through one of them. It was a standard reporter’s notebook which he used in the standard way, from front to back on one side of the page, then from back to front again on the other, crossing through the pages with a single pencil stroke when they were done with. He tore out a handful of pages, replaced them in his briefcase and passed the two notebooks over to me. ‘You can have them. They’re in longhand. God be with you.’
He got up to go.
‘Thanks a lot. Here, take my card.’ I scribbled the name and telephone number of my Banbury hotel on it. ‘Where can I get hold of you?’
‘Through the paper.’
‘Don’t you have a home address and telephone?’
‘Of course. Why do you want it?’
‘In case I want to get hold of you out of working hours. I’ll be around Banbury for a few days . . . Maybe I could buy you dinner, on expenses . . .’
He smiled. ‘I’m not very good company,’ he said.
‘It’s not your company I’m after, it’s your information,’ I said. But he still didn’t give me his number.
Chapter Eight
His information was good, but why had he given me so much? The first notebook was last year’s: towards the beginning, I found his coverage of the Rissington Abbey sports day. Some of his jottings were obvious, some obscure. I put it aside and turned to the second, recent notebook, which included Olivier’s inquest. I sifted through it, back in my hotel room, with the rickety metal windows opened as far as they would go and the stiffly synthetic net curtains looped back to get every breath of the rape-heavy air from the fields. Plenty of names. The Coroner, the pathologist, the school doctor, the school matron. None of which were relevant: I wasn’t investigating his death, something I found hard to remember.
Then, more useful to me, the charwoman who cleaned his room, the woman whose house he’d painted, the shop where Kelly thought he’d bought the vodka which had, indirectly, killed him. It was near the school. A good place to find out his habits, perhaps, except that Kelly had spoken to the manager who’d denied ever selling drink to under-age boys from the school. He wouldn’t be keen to chat about the boys’ real habits, since they were illegal and he presumably didn’t want to lose his licence.
The mention of vodka reminded me of Polly and another wave of guilt swept over me. She’d be back at home by now. I rang her. Her answering voice sounded attenuated and distant. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Polly. It’s Alex. How’s the hangover?’
‘Awful . . . thanks for clearing up.’ Then silence. Silence. From Polly
, the original natural geyser of chat, a Mannequin Pis of non-stop burble.
‘I’m down in Banbury, staying at the Wanderotel. Do you want my number?’
‘Oh . . . OK . . . hang on.’ More silence. ‘OK, go ahead.’
I gave her the number. ‘I’ll be back in two or three days. What’ll you be doing?’
‘Nothing. I’m just going to stay here.’
Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. ‘Why don’t you go home for a day or two?’ She has lots of brothers and sisters, mostly living near her parents’ house in Sussex. She’d be fine down there, with her bossy, affectionate mother, absent-minded, doting father, and a revolving doorful of siblings, siblings-in-law, nephews, and nieces.
‘I couldn’t face it.’
‘Give them a ring anyway.’
‘Not just yet . . . I suppose I should thank you, Alex.’
‘What for?’
‘For getting Barty to take me home for the night.’
‘Nothing to do with me. That was his idea.’
‘But he wouldn’t have done it, if it wasn’t for you.’
Silence again, edgy this time. She was getting at me, I realized, surprised. She never got at me. ‘Did you know his ex-wife was staying there?’ she went on.
I bit my tongue. ‘Yes,’ I said neutrally.
‘She’s very nice.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘I’m going to ring off now, Alex.’
Just as well, I thought, though I said, ‘Why?’
‘I’m watching a repeat of Cooking with Cassie.’
The worst television programme in the schedules. ‘You hate Cooking with Cassie.’
‘Cassie is Clive’s Other Woman. Maybe if I watch her. I’ll understand . . . Thanks for ringing, Alex. Goodbye . . .’
I didn’t feel better for ringing. I felt worse. I wasn’t used to sniping from her direction, and, besides, she obviously needed me there, to sit the other end of the sofa and watch Cassie cooking and bitch about her and say how much more beautiful, more talented, more loving Polly was, and then fetch sentimental videos from the corner shop and pass her the chocolates and Kleenex.
My hand hovered over the phone. I could ring Barty, tell him where I was, ask him to keep an eye on Polly. No, I couldn’t. He’d enough to do looking after his ex-wife, and would be much more interested in doing it. He might think it was a pretext to call him. Which it wasn’t, because Polly’s mood worried me, seriously.
I’d have to go back to London tonight. Plummer’s client could afford the petrol, and my unused bed in the Wanderotel. It was half-past two now. Time for one more interview, at least, today. Still no return call from Major Ellis, but it was too soon to chase him up.
I went back to Kelly’s notes. He’d given me the name of the old woman whose house was being painted by Olivier, the old woman who had described him as ‘kind’. I’d be interested in her comments. Maybe the kind boy had sat and chatted to the lonely old lady. Maybe one conversation with her would be my whole job finished. Not that I’d tell Plummer that, and not that I really expected it. The boy in the photograph didn’t look as if he’d be interested in old women. He looked as if he’d be interested in himself first and everyone else a long way behind.
Matilda Beckford, the old biddy’s name was, and the address 53 Foxglove Avenue. The boy, still on duty at the front desk, had no idea where to find Foxglove Avenue. He was a Wanderotel Accelerated Management Trainee, he told me proudly, spending three months working in Banbury. He was only on his second month and he didn’t get out much so he didn’t know the area. He worked punishing shifts. But he thought one of the cleaners would know.
One of the cleaners did, when he led me to the broom cupboard. She was sitting on a pile of used towels smoking a fag, illicit judging by the way she jumped when he came in. I always find that odd, when a woman in her fifties has to jump at the arrival of a pimply boy. I don’t want to be in that position when I’m in my fifties. That’s why I’ve got such a punitive self-employed pension plan. My money, when it doesn’t go into the mortgage or the upkeep on the flat, goes to the pension plan. It’s worth working for, though. It’s a sort of freedom. Money is freedom. Freedom of choice. In a small country like England, there are enough restrictions anyway, without adding poverty to the list.
The cleaner, fagless, gave me directions to Foxglove Avenue, which was as its name might have told me on a new development of sheltered housing. Sheltered housing. I’ll shelter myself, thank you.
The Nissan, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, and I finally tracked down Foxglove Avenue between Bluebell Way and Primrose Grove. The houses were all very small bungalows, carefully kept. Not the sort of places you’d expect to need decorating by schoolboys broadening their curriculum vitae.
53 Foxglove Avenue had the regulation tiny square of well-mowed lawn between the gate and the neat front door. It didn’t have net curtains. Some did. I walked up the wide-slabbed path and rang the doorbell, taking care not to meet the eye of the person hovering inside the front-room window. At least I knew she was in, but if she wanted to pretend to be out, I wanted to give her the chance. Not that I’d let her get away with it – I was certainly going to speak to her – but it would be a factor to reckon with if she had something to hide, and I wanted to know.
She came straight to the door. She was really quite old: mid- to late-eighties, I reckoned, with thinning yellow-grey hair, a slow walk, and a stoop. She’d been tallish, once, but now she was shorter than me, and all her physical reactions were slow and anxious, as if a final fall was only a step away. Her substantial chest had shaken downwards like a sugar-bag and was held at the waist by the belt of her rose-printed cotton dress.
‘Mrs Beckford?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, making no attempt to let me in.
‘My name is Alex Tanner,’ I said. ‘I work in television and I’m collecting material for a documentary on schools. I wanted to talk to you about the Community Service programme at Rissington Abbey, because I believe you’ve been a part of it.’
A look of alarm flew into her watery, colourless eyes. Television frightened her, perhaps? Or everything did? I kept on talking reassuringly. ‘You won’t be on television yourself, of course. It’s just background information. To give me a picture of the school. We’re not even sure that we’ll use the school, so it may all come to nothing – these things often don’t—’ What I said didn’t matter. It was the warm, friendly, soothing tone of voice, like talking to an animal or a baby. ‘And we won’t use your name. It’s very hot, isn’t it?’
She blinked at the sudden change of subject. She was holding on to the door handle for balance, and concentrating on staying upright made it even harder for her to think clearly. She thought she didn’t understand the transition because she was old. In fact I’d thrown her a curved ball. ‘It’s hot and I’m very thirsty, I wonder if I could have a drink of water?’
She stepped back and headed off along the wide short hall to the kitchen area, to get me a drink. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I had her.
On the way to the kitchen I stuck my head in the front room, which smelt of locked windows and age. Tidy, bare, over-filled by a blue velour three-piece suite bought for a larger room and a television with a giant screen. No family photographs. Either she didn’t have children, or she didn’t want to be reminded of them.
Actually it wasn’t water she gave me, it was real lemonade, which she had ready-made in a jug in the fridge. She did everything efficiently but very slowly. While she shuffled from fridge to cupboard I sat at the kitchen table and watched her orbitingspace-capsule movements, not offering to help, logging the contents of the fridge. She wasn’t starving, anyway. The fridge was full of small packages, clumsily wrapped in kitchen foil, presumably leftovers; looked like frugality, not poverty.
The kitchen had been recently painted cream. It was a smallish room, almost square, with worktops and plugs adjusted for wheelchair height and a door which led to a tiny back g
arden, a square of lawn bordered by raised flowerbeds, suitable for wheelchair gardeners. I wondered if she’d be better off in a wheelchair, and what it felt like to walk a wobbling tightrope over such a ubiquitous safety-net.
The painting had evidently been done by an amateur. There were patches where the last coat showed through, there were drips, now dried, and the gloss coat on the woodwork was uneven. But it had been done with care. What was wrong with it was inexperience rather than carelessness or ill will. If Olivier had done this, then he wasn’t, or only, the spoilt, selfish adolescent Plummer had described.
‘Will you repeat what I say to the people up at the school?’ she said when she finally sat down. She had a rich local accent but she spoke grammatically and I reckoned that she would usually have taken me through to her front room, but that now, with age lapping round her neck, she was grateful to collapse on the nearest chair. Her eyes sought mine waveringly.
‘Not a word,’ I said.
‘I’ve been very troubled.’
‘About?’
‘Did you read what it said in the paper?’
‘Yes. I was very interested in your comments about the poor boy who died – Olivier, wasn’t it?’
She made a humming noise and rocked backwards and forwards. ‘That’s what’s troubling me,’ she said.
‘Tell me about it,’ I said, completely lost. ‘Tell me about Olivier.’
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘The bit in the paper – the bit you read – it was a pack of lies.’
‘Olivier wasn’t kind, generous, warm-hearted?’
‘I’ve no idea. I never laid eyes on him, my dear, not once.’
Chapter Nine
The obvious question was what Olivier had been doing with all those missing Wednesday afternoons, and that last missing weekend. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea. No idea at all,’ said the old woman defensively. ‘Why should I?’
The possibilities began to excite me. It might have been ordinary schoolboy naughtiness; he might just have bunked off and gone to the cinema, or smoked behind the bike sheds, or done mild drugs somewhere. On the other hand he might have been doing something which, directly or indirectly, led to his death. Which I reminded myself I wasn’t investigating.
In At The Deep End Page 5
