Mortal Taste

by J M Gregson

  ‘You’ve been talking to Darcy.’

  ‘We don’t normally reveal our sources of information. But yes, Mr Simpson came into the station to talk to us.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did!’

  ‘Mr Simpson was doing no more than his duty as a citizen, if he had information which he thought might be relevant to a murder inquiry.’

  ‘Oh, yes, he’d enjoy that, Darcy would. Bet he couldn’t wait to get to you. Impressed you as a perfectly balanced individual, did he?’

  ‘Neither Sergeant Hook nor I have seen Mr Simpson. He spoke to Inspector Rushton at Oldford CID.’

  ‘And your Inspector said Darcy Simpson was a sober citizen doing his duty, did he? I bet he did.’

  ‘Miss Phillips, we are not at this moment concerned with the mental stability of our informant. It is our duty to check out the truth or otherwise of what he has told us. That, in this case, happens also to mean that we are checking out the truth of what you said to a member of our murder team last night.’

  ‘All right. I was economical with the truth, I suppose. I didn’t see why my private life should be dragged into the spotlight.’

  ‘So you lied.’

  ‘I concealed things, yes.’

  ‘By lying.’ Lambert was anxious to have this seemingly composed young woman on the back foot when they got to the heart of this exchange.

  ‘Is it important how I protected myself?’

  ‘I think it is, yes. At best you have wasted police time in a murder investigation. At worst, you have deliberately given false information in an attempt to divert suspicion away from yourself. Either way, you should realize that it’s very serious. You should also take stock of your position at this moment. I should warn you that you would be foolish in the extreme to attempt further lies in the next few minutes.’

  I must be getting older and nastier, thought Lambert: I’m quite enjoying this. And Tamsin Phillips was at last looking ruffled. She said sulkily, ‘I told you, I was merely trying to keep my private life to myself. You’d better ask me whatever you want to now.’

  ‘Is it true that you have a history of physical violence? That you were very lucky not to face a charge which might well have brought you a custodial sentence?’

  She sighed theatrically. ‘Good old Darcy! Showed you his scars, did he? Yes, it’s true enough. I was younger and sillier, then. I stabbed him all right. Three times. Nearly killed the bugger! Perhaps I should have done!’ She was suddenly exultant, her face flushed with the memory of her violence, her dark hair agitated by the animated movements of her head.

  ‘According to the records of the Thames Valley Police, it seems that it was only Darcy Simpson’s refusal to bring charges which saved you from a court appearance and a probable custodial sentence.’

  ‘I’d never have gone to prison. I was high on LSD, and my psych. would have said I was too unstable to be convicted! What I can’t fathom now is why I took such exception to being ditched by a weirdo like Darcy Simpson.’

  There was a heavy silence in the cramped little room, whilst the CID men let the enormity of her error sink in. Lambert’s instinctive attempt to rattle her had succeeded. At length he said, ‘Still unstable, are you, Miss Phillips? Unstable enough to blow a man’s head away with a pistol, perhaps?’

  She started from her chair, and Hook for a moment thought she was going to strike Lambert, who moved not an inch. Then she sank back and said in what was almost a whisper, ‘I didn’t kill Peter Logan.’

  ‘Then presumably you would like to see whoever did kill him brought to justice. Your actions so far have scarcely contributed to that.’

  She raised both hands to her face, then pulled them swiftly away, as if she felt her cheeks burning her fingers. Then she said sullenly, ‘You’d better ask me whatever questions you wish.’

  ‘And you in turn should not only answer truthfully, but also offer us any other information or opinions you think might be useful in a murder inquiry. What was your relationship with Peter Logan?’

  ‘He was an excellent head teacher. A good leader, with lots of energy and ideas. I’m sure other people will—’

  ‘And what was your personal relationship with him?’

  The face which had recently flushed was whitening now, its pallor accentuated by the black hair which framed it. ‘Darcy Simpson told you about this, didn’t he?’

  ‘I’m interested in what you have to tell us. In what you held back from us last night.’

  ‘All right.’ She sat silently for a moment, with her hands together on her lap. Lambert stared hard into her face; he would have given much to know whether she was gathering herself for what she had to reveal or whether she was calculating what she could still hold back. ‘Peter and I had an affair.’

  ‘Had? It was over at the time of his death?’

  Again a tiny pause. ‘Were having, I should say. We were still lovers at the time of his death.’ Tears gushed in a flood from those large, dark eyes, seeming to startle her as much as them by their suddenness. Lambert offered no words of consolation, just as he had stared hard into her face during her earlier distress, knowing how the absence of the usual social niceties unnerved those who were not used to the business of interrogation.

  ‘How long had this been going on?’

  ‘Seven months. We’d been lovers for the last six.’ No hesitation this time, and the precision of one involved in a serious affair of the heart.

  ‘How serious was it?’

  A flash of irritation in the oval face at the deliberate banality of his question. ‘What is serious? Do you want me to give you the intensity on a scale of one to ten?’ She stared challengingly into the unblinking grey eyes, but Lambert watched and waited, saying nothing. Eventually, she dropped her gaze to the scarred table between them and said bleakly, ‘We felt a lot for each other.’

  ‘How public was this relationship?’

  ‘Very private. We had to be discreet. For one thing, Peter had two children in the school, until July. He still has one. I taught Catriona for her History GCSE.’ She allowed herself a small smile at the strangeness of that, and even that tiny relaxation lit up her face. It was easy to see why that strange young man Darcy Simpson had clung to his memory of her.

  ‘Did Mrs Logan know about it?’

  ‘No.’ The monosyllable came almost too quickly on the heels of the question. ‘I’m sure she didn’t. We weren’t planning divorce or anything like that. It was intense but – but . . .’

  ‘Short-term?’ Lambert helped her out for once when she was lost for a word.

  ‘No.’ Again the swift denial, this time on a note of outrage. Perhaps she heard that note herself, for she lowered her voice as she went on. ‘We cared a lot for each other, but Peter had a family, and I didn’t want to disrupt that any more than he did.’

  There was a hint of desperation as she spoke, as if she was trying to convince herself as well as her hearers of what she said. The experienced CID men in front of her had heard this sort of tale a hundred times before. They wondered what the man in the case would have said. That old problem with a murder case: the victim who can never speak for himself.

  Lambert said, ‘You say you were discreet about this. If this liaison went on for seven months, people will know about it, however cautious you think you’ve been.’

  She looked for a moment as if she would deny the possibility, then shook her head ruefully. ‘You’re probably right. One or two people in the school probably twigged what was going on. Have they been talking about it?’

  Lambert ignored that. Instead, he said, ‘Darcy Simpson seemed to know all about your affair.’

  ‘He did. He’s obsessed with me.’

  ‘Despite what you did to him?’

  ‘Yes. If anything, it seemed to increase his hang-up. He was ditching me at the time, but he came out of hospital convinced I was the one for him. He said what I had done showed the depth of my passion. He took a job here when I moved to Cheltenham. He rings me up, someti
mes three or four times a week. I’ve seen him following me in the town. I could have him for stalking, if I wanted to.’

  ‘But as you nearly killed him once, you won’t, Miss Phillips. If Darcy Simpson knows about your affair with Peter Logan, be assured that other people will also know. You were very foolish to try to keep it from us.’

  ‘I accept that, now.’ She looked suddenly very weary. ‘I followed my first instincts to keep our relationship secret. I’d been secretive for so long that I suppose it was a habit. Well, you know now, and I recognize that I was foolish. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Did you kill Peter Logan?’

  Even Hook was surprised by the sudden aggression of the question. But Lambert had decided by now that sympathy was not the way to deal with Tamsin Phillips.

  She looked furious for a moment. But all she said was a thin-lipped, ‘No. Of course I didn’t.’

  ‘And have you any idea who did?’

  ‘No. I’ve thought of nothing else since we were given the news yesterday morning, but I haven’t the faintest idea. I’d certainly tell you if I had.’

  ‘When did you last see Mr Logan?’

  ‘In school. On the Friday before he died.’ Again she scarcely opened her mouth. It seemed as if each syllable had to be forced out.

  ‘And when were you last alone with him?’

  A tiny pause. Her hands clasped and unclasped, but were perfectly still as she said, ‘On the Wednesday night before that. Five days before he died.’

  Lambert’s voice became softer, almost sympathetic for the first time, as he said, ‘Peter Logan was seen leaving the Birmingham University campus at ten to seven on Monday evening. We think he was back in Cheltenham by eight thirty at the latest. But Mrs Logan was not expecting him home until around eleven. Did he come to see you on the night he died?’

  Her voice was very low as she responded to Lambert’s quiet questioning. ‘No. I told you, the last time I saw him was during a normal school day on the Friday before he died.’

  ‘Then have you any idea where he intended to go on Monday night?’ Lambert was almost apologetic in his tone, but both of them knew the importance of the question.

  Several seconds seemed to pass before she said dully, ‘No. I knew he was at the conference on Monday. I thought he would be going straight home.’

  ‘It seems probable that he had arranged to meet someone that night. Someone who killed him. You can’t even hazard a guess as to who that someone might be?’

  ‘No. Peter didn’t say anything to me about a meeting.’

  They left her staring hard at the blank wall of the little room.

  Hook had driven the police Mondeo through the school gates and on to the road outside them before he said, ‘You went hard at her.’

  ‘Yes. She annoyed me, Bert, though that’s no excuse. But perhaps the fact that she’d been dishonest to start with earned her a little harshness.’

  Hook smiled. He had known men harsher, in his time. He’d known men who’d reduced witnesses to tears much faster than had happened today, without getting as much out of them as John Lambert did in quieter ways. He said, ‘She told us about her affair with Peter Logan readily enough, once you got to work on her. I’m beginning to get rather a different feeling about the private life of our late saintly headmaster.’

  Lambert said nothing. He was wondering whether even now Tamsin Phillips had been wholly honest with them.

  Twelve

  Detective Sergeant Bert Hook made surprisingly good progress with Archie Weatherly, the seventy-year-old industrialist he was visiting because Weatherly was a governor of Greenwood Comprehensive School.

  They were chalk and cheese these two, the consciously old-fashioned captain of industry and the slightly overweight CID man with his village bobby exterior. But Bert was a Barnardo’s boy, who had met many wealthy patrons in his late adolescence in the home. He never minded being patronized by people like Weatherly. It put them off their guard, made them underestimate him, made them reveal things about themselves and other people which they didn’t intend to reveal, sometimes didn’t even realize they had revealed at all. Hook entered the huge office of the non-executive director of the building company and found himself brusquely directed to an upright chair in front of the big desk. He took it without irritation.

  ‘I thought they might have sent someone of higher rank than a sergeant to interview a man who’d been a governor since the school was set up,’ grumbled Weatherly.

  ‘Big team. Fully deployed,’ said Hook, gnomically but affably. ‘Still, I expect Superintendent Lambert will want to speak to you later, if you can point us towards the murderer.’

  ‘Can’t do that. Can’t really see why you want to speak to me anyway. I’m an industrialist, not a schooly.’ Archie Weatherly dredged up a term from almost half a century earlier, when he had been a military man. He apparently saw no contradiction in the ideas that he had nothing to say but should nevertheless be interviewed by the top man in the case.

  He now leaned forward confidentially towards Hook, smelling revoltingly of tobacco and aftershave, and said, ‘We’re even getting murders in Cheltenham now. If you ask me, it’s another example of this random violence that’s taking the country over.’

  DS Hook restrained the comment that he wasn’t asking him. ‘There’s been a lot of violence for a long time now, sir, even in Cheltenham. But very little of it is completely random. Most of it has a purpose, even if it’s a criminal purpose.’

  Weatherly frowned, then nodded slowly. ‘You think he was mugged, do you? Well these young buggers are running out of control all right. Need a touch of the birch, if you ask me.’

  Bert didn’t. ‘We’re almost certain this wasn’t a mugging, sir. Mr Logan’s pockets didn’t appear to have been touched. His death is much more likely to have been at the hands of someone who knew him.’ Or someone hired by such a person: but Hook didn’t want to trail such a complication across the brain processes of the man in front of him.

  Weatherly slowly digested the thought that he might even have had contact with Logan’s killer. He found it a surprisingly attractive idea. It brought a welcome excitement into what he was finding an increasingly dull life. ‘See whatcha mean, Sergeant. Rum do, this. So you want me to suggest who might have killed young Logan.’

  ‘We don’t really expect that, sir. It would be remarkable if you could lead us straight to our killer.’ More like bloody impossible, thought Bert. ‘This is just a routine inquiry really; we’re getting in touch with anyone who had contact with the murder victim, in the days before he died. There is no suggestion, of course, that you might have killed Mr Logan yourself.’

  Weatherly guffawed at the absurdity of such a notion.

  ‘But you might have noted some abnormality in the behaviour of the murder victim himself—’

  ‘No. Can’t say I did. Young Logan was full of himself and his school at the governors’ meeting last week – as usual. Not that he didn’t have things to boast about, you understand. Greenwood seems to be doing very well – for a school in the state system, of course.’

  ‘—or some peculiarity in the attitude or actions of those around him,’ concluded Bert Hook rather desperately.

  Archie Weatherly digested this slowly, nodding as the full import of Hook’s suggestion took root. For the first time since Hook had arrived in his office, he thought carefully. Like many a less exalted person, he felt the macabre glamour of that word murder, and wished to maintain a contact with the hunt, however tenuous. His brow furrowed, then lightened as a thought came to him. Bert Hook wished the criminal suspects he spent his life crossing swords with were as transparent as this ageing captain of industry. He prompted his man. ‘Any ideas you have will be treated in the strictest confidence, of course.’

  ‘Fenton. Stephen Fenton.’

  Hook made a note of the name. When no further details emerged from the man behind the big desk, he said gently, ‘Is Mr Fenton a member of the school st
aff, sir? We have a team of—’

  ‘No, no, of course he isn’t.’ Weatherly shook his head as if he despaired of the modern police service. ‘He’s a governor of Greenwood School, like me. He was the Chairman for a couple of years. Made quite a good job of it, I believe.’

  ‘And why would this give him a connection with the Headmaster’s death?’ asked Hook patiently.

  Weatherly looked immensely conspiratorial. He leaned forward, though the size of his desk still kept him some eight feet away from Hook and made the movement a little ridiculous. ‘Spoke to him a few days ago. Told him he should become Chair of the Governors again. He turned me down flat!’

  Weatherly sat back with the air of a man who has dropped a bombshell into a humdrum investigation. Hook waited for a moment to see whether the man would enlarge on Fenton’s refusal, then said diffidently, ‘And you think this might have some significance, sir?’

  ‘Every significance, surely? Fellow turned me down flat on the phone. And I made it clear I could have fixed it for him.’ He shook his head sadly; he was not used to men who turned down the chance of promotion, even in the arcane and unpaid world inhabited by school governors.

  ‘Did Mr Fenton give you any reason for refusing to reassume the chair?’ said Hook dutifully.

  ‘No. Well, he said he had two children in the school and there could be a clash of interests if he was Chairman, that he didn’t want to be seen to be favouring the progress of his own kids, but I’m sure that couldn’t have been the real reason.’

  Hook did not permit himself the sigh of frustration he felt so tempted to indulge. Men like Archie Weatherly did not take kindly to having their ideas dismissed. Instead, he took his leave politely, with the usual injunctions to Weatherly to get in touch if he had further relevant thoughts on this crime.

  As he climbed into his car, he thought resignedly that his visit to Weatherly had been a waste of time, one of those many blind alleys which are inevitable in a murder investigation.