Mortal Taste

by J M Gregson

  The man gave his first smile. It was not a pleasant one. ‘Never you mind that, Martin. Just give me the fullest possible answers to my questions, or things could turn quite nasty for you.’

  Martin was unable to look into his tormentor’s face. He became conscious of the man’s hand, clenching and unclenching in a tight black leather glove. ‘What – what is it you want to know?’

  ‘What did Logan know, sunshine?’ The man’s eyes glittered an icy blue; they were within a foot of Martin’s.

  ‘He knew about me. He’d caught me taking a couple of boys into the junior science lab, and he said—’

  ‘Said what a naughty lad you were, yes. We know that. And what did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Martin was suddenly afraid that this wolfish man was going to hit him, hard and repeatedly. He could not take his eyes off that black fist as it clenched and unclenched.

  ‘You told him about the ring, didn’t you?’

  Martin had never heard it called a ring before. They’d always referred to themselves as a group. ‘Ring’ seemed somehow much worse. ‘He knew about it. Or at least he gave me the impression he knew.’ Martin was suddenly aware of how Peter Logan had made bricks with very little straw, how he had pretended he knew much more than he did. By this means he had trapped Martin into admitting more than he ever should have done. ‘I – I said there were a group of us, yes. He gave me the impression he knew already, and I only realized later that—’

  ‘You’ve been a silly man, Martin. A very silly man. You’re going the right way to finish up like Logan.’

  The visitor was looking hard into Sheene’s face. He brought a second black-gloved hand up to join the one which riveted Martin’s gaze, and rubbed the two slowly together. They were acquiring a life of their own, those hands, in Martin’s sickly imaginings.

  He licked his lips and said, ‘Peter Logan phoned the National Paedophile Unit about us, you know, after he’d spoken to me.’

  ‘Yes. You didn’t do yourself any good with Peter Logan, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you didn’t do yourself any good with the ring, not when you went grassing on your friends to your head teacher.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. Peter seemed to know all about it already, the way he talked.’ Martin felt the flesh on the back of his neck beginning to creep. Was it because of him that Peter Logan had died? Had those fists which curled and uncurled beneath his horrified gaze placed the pistol against the head of a man who knew too much for his own safety?

  Those hands now came slowly up towards his face, then held each side of his head in a vice-like grip, forcing him to open his eyes and look into the man’s face as he tried to cringe away. ‘Last warning, Sheene. You don’t go near the ring again. You’re out. And when the police come sniffing around, you know nothing. You give them a single name and you’re dead meat. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  The fingers and thumbs which were grasping his cheeks and his ears relaxed slowly, as if reluctant to release their hold. Even when the man lowered the hands slowly to his sides, those hard blue eyes still looked into his face, as if fixing its image in their retinas for future use.

  As he shut the door behind this sinister visitor, Martin Sheene felt floods of relief coursing upwards to his brain. His head swam. He forced himself to move to a window to make sure that the man was really leaving.

  The man who had loomed so large in the low-ceilinged room seemed a normal size as he moved down the path and away from the house. He was not as tall as he had seemed during his threats, a little round-shouldered, and he walked with a slight limp which Martin had not noticed until now. Almost a diminutive figure, in fact. He did not look back towards the house.

  But as he shut the garden gate behind him, Martin caught a last glimpse of those hands, strong as steel beneath the thin black leather.

  DC Cox recorded the time of the man’s departure as 14.24 hours. He relayed this information to Oldford CID, along with his description of Sheene’s visitor.

  Jane Logan was back at work in the florist’s shop she managed so efficiently. The owner was glad to see her calm presence and direction back in place. The two girls who worked in the shop had made some embarrassing mistakes in the week when they had operated without supervision.

  It was there, amidst the heady and incongruous scents of roses and chrysanthemums, that Lambert and Hook conducted their last interview with Jane Logan. It was the first time they had seen her wearing make-up, which she had donned to resume her working role. With her blue eyes and blonde hair, her strong features and air of command, she looked here a busy and attractive working woman rather than a grieving widow.

  She took them into a small room behind the displays of flowers in the shop; they sat on upright chairs around a scarred wooden table which had seen much service. Lambert said, ‘We saw Mr Fenton about half an hour ago. I expect he’s spoken to you since then.’

  ‘No. He may have tried to get through, but the line’s been occupied. We’ve four funerals on Thursday and Friday. I’ve been talking to the bereaved about the floral arrangements.’

  It was probably true, Lambert decided: this was an intelligent woman, who’d been caught concealing information from them already. She wasn’t going to lie when there was little point in doing so. He said, ‘We were talking to Mr Fenton about a Smith and Wesson revolver we know was in his possession. And in particular about the way in which he disposed of it.’

  For a brief moment, there was panic in the light blue eyes. Then she said, ‘I didn’t want it around, that was all. Not once you’d said it was the kind of pistol which had been used to kill Peter.’

  ‘So you disposed of it.’ Lambert nodded slowly, seizing avidly upon the morsel she had offered him while giving her the impression that Fenton had already revealed all this.

  She nodded, still unaware that she was offering them anything new. ‘I said I’d get rid of it for him. It seemed safer that way. I drove out and dumped it in the Severn on Sunday night. I was glad to see it go. I’ve always hated guns.’

  ‘Why did you dispose of it like that, Mrs Logan?’

  ‘I told you. We’d heard that Peter had been killed with a pistol of that make or something very similar. It didn’t seem sensible for you to find it at Steve’s house.’

  ‘Indeed. You were anticipating a police search of his residence at some stage, were you?’

  She looked hard into the long, lined face. Perhaps she was realizing now that she had given away more than was necessary. ‘I don’t know the rules about search warrants. For all I know, you were likely to search Steve’s house and mine at any moment.’

  Without taking his eyes off her face, Lambert allowed himself a faint smile at such naivety. ‘Did you kill your husband with that pistol, Mrs Logan?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t.’

  ‘Did Mr Fenton shoot him through the back of the head with that weapon? Is that why you were so anxious to see the last of it?’

  ‘No! I told you, it seemed a silly thing to keep it around, in the circumstances. That was all there was to it.’

  ‘And where did you see fit to dispose of this dangerous and unlicensed weapon?’

  ‘Out beyond Bishop’s Norton. On Sunday night. At somewhere around half past eleven.’ She piled up the detail; for some reason, it seemed suddenly important to convince them of what she had done.

  Lambert studied her for a moment. ‘No doubt you could take us to the spot. It may well be necessary to recover that weapon, in due course. Good morning, Mrs Logan.’

  They were gone as abruptly as they had arrived. They left Jane Logan wondering for the first time whether Steve Fenton was responsible for the death of her husband.

  Twenty-Three

  DI Rushton was wishing he’d let the young woman beside him drive the police Mondeo. He could have done with the time to concentrate on exactly how he was going to question a contract killer.

  ‘You won’t need to say anyth
ing, Pat,’ he said, forcing himself to use the first name of the tall girl with the large brown eyes whom he had brought with him from Oldford. ‘You’re here to learn, as a young DC. This will be useful experience for you.’

  DC Pat Ross wondered why Chris Rushton always had to sound so stiff. The other young ones at the station laughed at him for it behind his back, but he always treated people fairly, and he could be an attractive man, if he would just learn to unbend a little. He wasn’t that old: early thirties, she’d have said. Just a mature, experienced man, to a twenty-three-year-old like her. She said dutifully, ‘Yes, sir. I’ve never even seen a professional killer before, never mind spoken to one.’

  ‘He won’t admit that he kills for a living, you know. He’ll probably strike you at first as perfectly normal: it pays them to be as ordinary as possible.’

  ‘Yes, sir, for obvious reasons. I can see that.’

  Chris Rushton wondered if this attractive girl was secretly amused by him; he found himself wondering that quite often with girls nowadays. You couldn’t explain to them that it shook your confidence when your wife suddenly announced a divorce you’d never foreseen and took herself off with the toddler you’d adored. You weren’t allowed to tell girls you hadn’t much confidence, away from your work. Well, not until a later, more intimate stage, anyway; and he never seemed to reach that stage.

  Chris spent the rest of the journey thinking about his tactics for the interview at the end of it.

  Derek Minton carried an air of good-natured derision about him from the first moment of their meeting. He stood in the doorway of the big modern detached house for a few seconds, eyeing first Rushton and then the observant young woman beside him up and down before he invited them into the comfortable interior of his house. He had them sitting on the edge of a sofa before he said, ‘CID getting younger, is it? It was old Lambert and his plod of a sergeant who came to see me last time: I must say this is a considerable improvement.’

  He took in the curves of DC Ross beneath her sweater, ran his eyes up and down her nyloned legs with a smiling insolence which stayed just short of open lechery. He enjoyed taunting the police, especially when he felt the ground firm beneath his feet.

  Chris Rushton said stiffly, ‘You must have heard about the death of Peter Logan. He was the head teacher of a big school in Cheltenham.’

  ‘I believe I did hear, yes. Take a professional interest in all violent deaths, you see. As a criminologist, you understand. Pity about this one, I thought. By all accounts, he was a good headmaster. But I expect Mr Logan was prying into things which didn’t concern him. Teachers tend to do that, you know. I didn’t like it when my teachers did it.’

  ‘Did you kill him, Minton?’

  Derek Minton laughed, unhurriedly and quite heartily. ‘Of course I didn’t! I don’t know where you get these ideas from, really I don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps your name comes up because we know of at least four people you’ve killed in the last two years.’

  Minton gave them both a broad smile, then addressed his remarks to Pat Ross. ‘I suppose I should really take offence when he comes out with these things – probably threaten to sue for libel. I’m sure a lawyer would call this harassment. Must be embarrassing for a nice young girl like you, finding yourself involved in something as squalid as this.’

  DI Rushton told himself that he had expected this. Minton was a professional; he would have covered his tracks and was bound to behave as if he didn’t care about their accusations. But Chris still felt his assurance draining away in the face of the man’s brazen contempt. He said as truculently as he could, ‘So where were you on the night of Monday the twenty-eighth of September?’

  Minton pursed the lips of his small mouth. ‘Eight days ago, that. I’m not sure I can remember, off hand. Is it important?’ He flooded his sharp-featured face with innocence.

  Rushton was conscious of the pretty young girl beside him. Watch and learn, he’d said. And now she was watching him being made to look ridiculous. Minton could surely not be this confident, this affable, if he’d shot away Logan’s head. Chris felt he was playing out his part in a hopeless charade. He mustered all the boldness he could command to say, ‘You’d better be able to prove where you were on that night, Minton. Otherwise we might begin to think you were in Cheltenham, with a Smith and Wesson in your hand!’

  ‘Oh dear, dear, Inspector! DC Ross, I want you as my witness that this man has accused me of something I wouldn’t dream of doing. But just for the record, and to show how cooperative I am, how anxious to help hard-pressed police personnel with their enquiries, I think I can supply you with some proof of where I was that evening.’

  He walked across the big room to a mahogany cabinet in the far corner and took from the top drawer a single sheet of yellow paper. Rushton looked at it dumbly when it was handed to him. It was the programme for a school play, Unman, Wittering and Zigo, by Giles Cooper. It was the date of the production, 28th September, which leapt out at the Inspector. He said, ‘So this performance was on the night when Peter Logan was murdered. Hardly your scene, I’d have said, a school play.’

  Derek Minton shook his head indulgently, then smiled at Pat Ross. ‘Shows how little you know about me, that. My nephew was performing in that play, you see. Very good he was, as a matter of fact. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the play. It’s about a class of pupils who take a young teacher apart: very amusing.’ He tittered a little in fond remembrance.

  Rushton said as sternly as he could, ‘And you expect us just to take your word for it that you were there? Or is there anyone around who can vouch for your presence at that play on that night?’

  Minton pursed his lips again, enjoying the moment, putting off as long as he could the denouement of the scene. ‘My sister and brother-in-law and their other two children. And about three hundred other proud parents and relatives, if you should feel the need for them.’

  Pat Ross didn’t know what to say to DI Rushton as he gripped the wheel and stared grimly at the road ahead on the way back down the M5. They’d gone a full twenty miles before she managed to say, ‘Well, you did say from the start that it was a long shot, sir.’

  The Chief Constable was not at his most affable. He had a press conference arranged for midday on Wednesday, only twenty hours ahead, and as far as he could see he was going to have little that was new about the murder of Peter Logan to give the media vultures.

  An excellent headmaster had now become a saint in the eyes of the tabloids, and his violent death a commentary on the decline of Britain into lawlessness. Nine days after Logan had died, the television and radio people would be hostile in their questioning about the Cheltenham killing, looking for sound-bites which would make Douglas Gibson and his colleagues seem inefficient, uncaring or both. The CC had been hoping he might have been able to shut them up with an arrest, but that was looking increasingly unlikely.

  John Lambert was wondering why he had been summoned to the CC’s presence. Gibson was not a man given to wasting time, whether his own or other people’s, and it was scarcely twenty-four hours since Lambert had given him a full verbal report on the progress of the investigation. He said reluctantly, ‘Do you want me there tomorrow for the media briefing?’

  ‘Yes, I think you’d better be there for this one.’ Gibson grinned at his Chief Superintendent’s discomfiture: he knew how little Lambert appreciated these occasions. ‘I know you think you could be better employed elsewhere, John, but this might be an occasion for showing the flag. If I sit beside the man who’s been successful in so many murder hunts, those journalists might give us a stay of execution.’

  Lambert nodded gloomily. ‘I’ll be there. You never know, we may have something to report to them by then.’

  ‘You still think this death might be drugs-related?’ Gibson was hoping it wasn’t, simply because such a killing would reduce the chances of a successful arrest and prosecution.

  ‘DI Rushton has gone up to confront Derek Minton in Solihull
this afternoon. I don’t reckon he’ll get very much out of a contract killer, but Chris thought it was worth a try.’ Lambert kept his face resolutely straight: the prospect of the inflexible Rushton confronting Derek Minton was really no laughing matter.

  ‘Nothing else new since yesterday, I suppose?’

  ‘More than you’d think, but nothing conclusive. Logan’s widow has confessed to disposing of a pistol which may or not have been the murder weapon. Our surveillance man has just reported in that Martin Sheene’s had a visitor, but I don’t know any details yet. I’m about to go off and see Logan’s former mistress, Tamsin Phillips, again. She says she’s thought of something relevant, but I have my doubts about how reliable she is. She’s a highly strung woman with a history of violence: we’ve still got her in the frame as a possibility for the Logan killing.’

  ‘Then I won’t delay you. There is one piece of good news, however. It’s the reason that I asked you to come up here, as a matter of fact.’ Gibson smiled at the man who had joined a very different police service not long after he had. ‘The bureaucrats aren’t as inflexible as we feared. They’ve listened to my pleas and agreed that Chief Superintendent Lambert is a special case. You’re to stay on, John, if you’re agreeable. For at least another couple of years.’

  Gibson allowed himself a big grin. He wasn’t used to delivering good news, had found himself in the end anxious to get it over with quickly. He shrugged aside the man’s thanks, was touched to see how delighted a grizzled warrior in the fight against crime could be by the extension of his war. ‘Don’t bother to thank me, John. They’ve done me a favour, as well as you.’

  It was only when John Lambert had gone on his way that Douglas Gibson wondered how pleased the man’s wife and family would be when they heard the news.

  Bert Hook drove carefully through an irregular trail of pupils leaving Greenwood Comprehensive School, whilst Lambert stared through the window and marvelled again at the vast range of emotions on display in the minutes after the end of a school day, from small boys racing along in ecstasy at their release from the classroom to older children trudging with their eyes fixed upon the ground, as if despair could grow no deeper.