Mortal Taste

by J M Gregson

  Peter Logan gazed at his mobile phone fondly for a moment before he put it away. He looked up at the still clear blue sky above the city and saw that there was no one near him in this little patch of garden.

  He wondered whether to ring his wife, but decided against it.

  Jane Logan did not expect a phone call from her husband. She knew the pattern of occasions like this well enough: she was indeed, more aware of the sequence of days spent away from the school than Peter himself, who liked to think that he did not behave so predictably.

  She knew that he was unlikely to return before ten thirty that evening.

  Jane made an excellent evening meal for her daughter and herself, as though even food could be a defiant gesture against her husband’s absence. She served it formally, wondering if her daughter would notice how much loving care had gone into the fresh trout, new potatoes and asparagus. Catriona tucked in with a healthy sixteen-year-old appetite and chatted cheerfully, seeming not to notice the food which disappeared so rapidly.

  Catriona was at Greenwood Comprehensive, but she and her father avoided each other resolutely and successfully at school. The father wasn’t going to court any accusations of favouritism, whilst the daughter was even more anxious to avoid any association with the man at the top of the pile. For the most part, she succeeded surprisingly well; her friends sometimes went several sentences through their ritual grumbling about the deficiencies in the school hierarchy before they remembered that Catriona had a connection.

  It was easier for her because her elder brother had led the way, avoiding any accusations of sucking up to authority so successfully that he had been regularly disciplined for small misdemeanours throughout his school career. Matt was away at university now, his sister said grandly, as though to claim a little extra maturity herself from his progress. He was in fact attending the Freshers’ Conference at St Andrews University at this very moment.

  Catriona was a bright girl, who had performed impressively in her GCSEs this year and just entered the Greenwood sixth form. She was secretly determined to go to Cambridge, though she had not confessed quite how determined yet, even to her peers or her parents. She had a good relationship with her mother. They chatted easily about most topics, including things which went on at school.

  It was through Catriona that Jane knew that quite a few of the sixth-formers were experimenting with drugs, and that soft drugs were now being used by people lower down the school, though not, she thought, in great numbers. Jane had told Peter about this and been met with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He was doing what he could to correct the situation. As usual, he gave nothing away about exactly how much he had discovered.

  But all modern schools faced the problem: Greenwood was probably less affected than most of the larger comprehensives in the country. Peter Logan could not and would not use his daughter as a spy within the school, any more than he had used Matt before her.

  Catriona knew the unwritten domestic codes as well as her father, and was happy with them. After five years in the school, she was well used to dealing with the problems arising from having her father as headmaster. In any case, she seemed to see less and less of him these days, and they rarely spoke of school affairs in their family conversations; both of them knew the ground which was dangerous and trod carefully around it.

  It was easier with her mother. Neither of them were careful about boundaries, and they spoke happily and spontaneously with each other. Catriona noticed that her mother rarely mentioned her father in their conversations these days. She wondered why that was.

  ‘Dad’s in Birmingham today, isn’t he?’ she said as she washed the dishes after their meal.

  ‘Yes. I’m not expecting him back until quite late.’ Jane dried the oval serving dish she had used for the trout and turned her back to put it away in the cupboard. She wondered whether to talk to Catriona about the vibrant new sixth form, with its record numbers and vast range of subject choices. Instead, she said, ‘I think I’ll go down to the gym again tonight.’

  Her daughter grinned. ‘You’re becoming a real fitness freak, Mum! You’ll be healthier than me, soon.’

  Jane smiled fondly at her lithe daughter. ‘No danger of that, kiddo! But we Yorkshire women like to get our money’s worth when we join anything, you know.’

  ‘I never used to think of you as a fitness fanatic.’

  ‘Well, then, I can still surprise you, can’t I? Anyway, I’m not a fanatic. It’s just that you have to fight harder against the flab when you get to my advanced years. Have you never heard of middle-age spread?’ Jane patted a stomach that was in fact reassuringly flat.

  It was good to have a mother who did the things much younger women did, who could talk to you about teenage fashions, even if she was openly contemptuous of the sillier ones. Catriona called down a cheery goodbye from her bedroom as her mother left the house half an hour later.

  It was curious that her friend’s mother, who worked part-time on the desk at the Gym Club, had never met her mother there.

  Peter Logan drove fast down the M5. He was full of eager anticipation, and the motorway was quiet between seven and eight in the evening.

  There was a crispness about the early evening darkness, and the lights going north on the opposite carriageway seemed unnaturally bright as they raced past him. He slowed for a few miles behind a police car, watching a small procession of cars build up behind him as others like him refused to exceed the speed limit to pass the official vehicle.

  But the police Mondeo turned off at the Worcester exit and Peter eased his Rover 75 up to ninety, passing a succession of vehicles of various sizes, their red tail lights brilliantly sharp in the clear night air of early autumn. He wondered if there might be the first frost by morning; they were almost into October. It was pleasantly warm in the car and he was well aware of the danger of drowsiness after a full day. But he felt fully alert, not lethargic. It had been a successful day, and now there were the pleasures of the evening to look forward to.

  He had met several of his contemporaries at the conference, people who had started to climb the educational ladder at more or less the same time as him. Not many had been as successful as he had. And some of them seemed to be slowing up a little. He had sensed an easing back on the throttle of ambition, a readiness to accept that not all goals were obtainable. Well, he still had his foot on the accelerator and a full relish for the ride ahead. He had discerned no diminution of his own energy, no slowing of his drive.

  That went for all areas, leisure as well as work. He smiled in the darkness, fancied he felt a pleasurable stirring in his groin. You needed to play hard as well as work hard, if you were to be a proper man. The smile became a wide grin of anticipation.

  It was pleasant travelling alone on an occasion like this. Even pleasanter when you controlled your own progress in a fast and comfortable car. He glanced at the car’s clock as he left the motorway at Junction 16 and moved towards the suburbs of Cheltenham. He had made excellent time from the university campus in Birmingham. He slowed the big car to thirty miles an hour, which felt almost stationary after his motorway speeds. He would arrive before eight thirty, as he had promised; like many another man who lived much of his life by the clock, Peter Logan liked to be exactly punctual whenever it was possible.

  He parked the car in the place he had chosen last time, two hundred yards from the flat he was visiting, by the side of a small park. It was not overlooked by houses, so there was little chance of any prying eyes noting its presence there. You couldn’t afford gossip, in a job like his. People were still very old-fashioned in the moral view they took of headmasters and clergymen. It was unfair, but you might as well accept it.

  He sat for a minute in the car when he had parked it, savouring the quietness of the spot he had chosen, feeling the excitement of the two hours which lay ahead. Then he eased himself from the driver’s seat and pressed the automatic locking device on his key ring, watching the orange light flash brightly in the darkn
ess as the doors were secured.

  Peter Logan felt the pistol against his neck before he heard the terse phrases: ‘Don’t look round. Move forward, slowly.’

  The voice was hoarse, perhaps with excitement. It was so near to his ear that it was distorted. Peter couldn’t be sure whether it was male or female, but he moved obediently forward as the small, cold circle of steel pressed harder into his flesh. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. He suppressed an absurd urge to raise his hands above his head, as he had seen men do in Westerns. They moved a few yards, very slowly.

  Peter Logan found his mouth very dry as he struggled into speech. ‘Whoever you are, you’ve got the wrong man. I’m no threat to anyone. I’m the headmaster of a local school, that’s all.’ For once he didn’t name it, didn’t say that it was the local school. At this moment, he wanted his job to be as small and insignificant as possible.

  The voice said, ‘I know who you are, Logan. Move slowly and keep your arms by your side.’

  Peter did as he was told. Perhaps this was some student prank to hold him to ransom for charity. Perhaps it was even one of his own sixth-formers on the end of a toy gun. He mustn’t lose face.

  The pistol felt horribly real.

  The voice said, ‘Turn right here. Keep your arms by your side. No abrupt movements.’

  They were by a small gate which led into the park. With his head held rigidly and his eyes staring fiercely ahead, he had not seen it. He turned obediently into the blackness under the trees, wanting to stretch his hands out ahead of him, not daring to do so, in case any movement should be interpreted as aggressive.

  Peter Logan discarded the idea that this was some student hoax. As he moved into the stygian darkness of the deserted park, fear flooded through him, retarding the movement of his limbs, paralysing his power of thought. He managed to gasp out, ‘Look, if it’s money you want, my wallet’s in the inside pocket of my jacket. You’re welcome to it!’

  There were no words of response from behind him. Instead, the pistol pressed hard into the back of his head, driving him ever further into the darkness. He felt turf beneath his feet as he stumbled off the path, then threw up his hands to maintain his balance.

  It was his last movement. His life disappeared into a blinding curtain of white pain as the pistol blew half his head away. He never heard the muffled sound which died in the foliage of the deserted park.

  Six

  Detective Sergeant Bert Hook should have been enjoying himself. He had finished work at midday. He was on a golf course, a very good one, the Worcestershire Golf Club at Malvern. A pleasant southerly breeze kept the temperature in the mid-sixties and moved high white clouds across a clear blue sky. The sun was just disappearing over the dramatic ridge of the Malvern Hills above the course. He could almost fancy he heard the strains of Elgar on the gentle down-draught from the hillside.

  And yet the normally cheerful Bert Hook was not happy. Those who play the infuriating game of golf will know that it can often have that effect. A badly topped drive can make a man unconscious of Paradise around him. But Bert was not playing badly; indeed, for a man who had regarded the game with nothing but contempt until two years ago, he was playing quite well.

  But he was partnering his old friend and working colleague, Superintendent John Lambert. And contemplating a venture into homicide.

  The two were part of the Ross-on-Wye team that was playing the Worcestershire Golf Club in a C team fixture. ‘It will be good for your game,’ Lambert had said. ‘Another new experience in your golfing development.’

  It was. And Hook wasn’t enjoying it.

  As a detective, Bert had the greatest admiration for John Lambert. He had worked with him for twelve years now, and his respect for the man had grown with each one. When they were on a case together, Hook worked for long hours and never counted the time. The chief was idiosyncratic in his methods, regarded as a dinosaur by some of the sharp young CID men who directed investigations from an office desk, but Bert Hook and the rest of his team showed him unquestioning loyalty.

  On the golf course, it was very different. It was not that John Lambert was incompetent. Far from it: he enjoyed the status of an eight handicap, a level which Bert Hook aspired to but doubted if he would ever attain. The problem was that Lambert insisted on offering ‘helpful’ advice to his sergeant, whom he saw as a tyro in the game, a man who could and should benefit from his friend’s experience.

  After they had shaken hands with their opponents from the home club on the first tee, Lambert took Hook to one side. ‘We’re partners in the same team, so I’m allowed to offer you advice and guidance. And you mustn’t hesitate to ask me for whatever help you need as we go along.’

  Bert’s heart sank to the soles of the new golf shoes he had bought for the occasion.

  His fears were fully justified. Most of the trouble came on the holes where he was given a shot advantage. From his newly acquired nineteen handicap, Bert received eight of these. ‘The difference in this match will come down to whether you use your shots or not,’ Lambert explained with satisfaction on the second hole. He then stood at Hook’s elbow with an almost maternal anxiety whenever Bert was playing one of his shot holes.

  His tutoring became more elaborate and Bert’s replies ever more terse as the match proceeded. Bert wished with increasing intensity that he had never given up cricket for this ridiculous pastime. The seam bowler who had terrorized the batsmen of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire for twenty years was being reduced to an incompetent by this effete game.

  Well, not so much by the game as by his chief’s advice on how to play it.

  Matters came to a head with the match all square on the fourteenth. ‘Swing easily, you’re snatching at it,’ Lambert advised the perspiring Hook. Bert tried. He made minimal contact with a ball which seemed to be growing smaller with each hole. It flew low and right and curled savagely into a ditch.

  Lambert was there before his disgusted partner. He inspected the bottom of the ditch. ‘There’s hardly any water in there. You can get it out with a wedge, if you’re careful. It’s our only chance, now.’

  Bert didn’t like that ‘now’. It was meant to remind him that all the partnership’s troubles were down to this most recent disastrous shot. He stared unbelievingly at the top of his ball, just visible above an inch of green mire. He climbed obediently into the ditch, affecting not to notice the smirks of their opponents at this interesting development. To get anywhere near his ball, he had to bend like Quasimodo beneath a hawthorn. A vicious crop of steely thorns savaged his lower back and his buttocks. Nettles reared between his knees to threaten his manhood. He could no longer see his ball.

  He reminded himself without conviction that he was doing this for pleasure.

  Lambert’s voice said from somewhere above him, ‘You’ll need to keep your head very still for this one. It’s not an easy shot.’

  By gingerly placing his left foot halfway up the bank of the ditch and leaning far to his right, Bert found that he could just see the top of his ball again through the undergrowth. He swung at it, hopelessly and without hope. His club caught in the branches of the hawthorn behind him, but with a desperate brute strength he wrested it clear and launched it at the ball. The steel of the club-head hit mud and stagnant water with an awful splatter and Hook’s vision disappeared as a black wetness filled his eye-sockets.

  He climbed heavily from the ditch, refusing to scream as the hawthorn scored his back and shoulders. There was spontaneous applause from his two opponents, with whom he had developed a rapport in the face of Lambert’s assistance to him. He looked down and saw that the new trousers he had donned to represent the club in this, his first match, were spattered with evil-smelling black and green ditch water. There were ragged cheers and shouts of ‘Encore!’ from the four men in the match behind them.

  Bert Hook limped towards his golf bag like a malodorous Dalmatian. He had slammed his wedge back into it before he realized the club-head was st
ill covered with mud.

  He was studiously avoiding any glance towards his partner. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Where did the ball go?’

  ‘It didn’t come out of the ditch,’ said Lambert sadly. ‘I thought you were rather ambitious to attempt that shot, you know. When you’ve played a little longer, you’ll realize what’s possible and what isn’t.’

  It took two pints of bitter in the clubhouse to restore the usually equable Hook to anything approaching normal conversation with his chief. In the interim, he reflected sullenly that Lambert seemed worse since the news of his impending retirement had broken. He was bearing up bravely at work, even talking of time for hobbies, but Bert fancied sometimes that he detected a quiet sort of panic in the man he had worked with for so long.

  Lambert would not have acknowledged anything so feeble in himself. But he was conscious of a restlessness, a refusal of his normally disciplined mind to settle to the tasks in hand. Perhaps it was because there was no really serious crime to occupy him at the moment. They had unearthed a tasty bit of embezzlement in a bank near the Welsh border, but that had now been passed to the Fraud Squad. He had only a little over two months of working life to go now and, in view of the irregular extensions Lambert had already been granted, even that was borrowed time. He was beginning to face up to the bleak prospect that his final murder investigation might be behind him.

  Golf should have been a welcome relaxation. Yet whilst he kept his end up in the post-match conversation with their opponents, Lambert found it difficult to lose himself completely in the banter. When they trooped into the dining room for a very acceptable meal, he scarcely noticed what he was eating. Then he listened with only half an ear to the ritual speeches and rather desperate jokes from host team captain and visiting captain.

  As soon as the formal proceedings were over, he wandered outside, away from the noisy hilarity which persisted in the clubhouse. The night was absolutely still, and surprisingly mild, considering that October was just around the corner. John Lambert moved away from the noise, a little way out on to the silent course, ignoring the dew upon his shoes. Here, all he could hear was the occasional hum of a car on the distant road along the base of the Malvern Hills, towering massively black above him.