Young, Gifted and Deadly

by William Stafford

  “They’m doing Murder in the Cathedral, apparently,” Miller read the blurb.

  Brough had to admit that was classier than their usual output.

  “Reimagined in a hip-hop setting,” Miller continued.

  “Fuck the DICWADS, Miller,” Brough sneered, “And come and have a look at this.”

  She joined Brough at the window. It overlooked the back garden, a neatly trimmed lawn bisected by a path that was lined with cod classical statuary.

  “What am I looking at? It’s nice. Classy. They must get a man in.”

  “Not that. Next door.”

  Miller strained to see. “Oh. That one’s not so nice. Bit overgrown. Cluttered, I’d say.”

  “And the other side.”

  Miller pressed her cheek against the pane. “That one’s OK, I suppose.”

  “It’s not your appraisal of the gardens I want, Miller - insightful though it is.”

  “What then?”

  “One of the three gardens before us is different.”

  “They’m all different.”

  “Well, yes, but one of them lacks something the other two have.”

  “A water feature!”

  “No, Miller. Look!”

  “It’s getting dark,” Miller waxed defensive. “Stop pissing about with guessing games and tell me.”

  Brough chuckled. “You sound like Wheeler when you’re narked.”

  “Stop fucking narking me then. What am I not seeing?”

  “A washing-line!” said Brough. “The Barkers have one. The neighbours on this side have one. But the neighbours on the other...”

  “So? It doesn’t mean - Lots of people don’t have washing-lines. Spin dryer and a clothes horse by the radiator does for me.”

  “Well, yes, but remember the murder weapon, Miller...”

  Miller’s eyebrows dipped. “He was garrotted.”

  “With...”

  Miller’s jaw dropped.

  “You see!”

  “Oh, it could just be a coincidence.”

  “Possibly, but we’d be fools not to look into it.”

  “I suppose.”

  “No suppose about it. Come on; let’s leave the merry widow to her sherry and give next door a knock.”

  They headed down to the hall.

  “How are we going to do it?” Miller asked, with the light of possibility in her eyes. “Pose as representatives from a leading brand of washing powder and say we’m conducting a survey about people’s laundry habits?”

  “Actually, Miller, I was thinking we could just turn up as police.”

  ***

  The sun was also going down on the car park at Priory High School. Only two cars were present: Stevens’s Ford Capri and a well-preserved Morris Minor. The vintage car was the pride and joy of Deputy Headteacher Alfred Abbott; the detectives were interviewing him in his office. The CCTV footage from the supermarket was playing on the screen of Mr Abbott’s desktop.

  “One more time, please,” said D C Pattimore, commandeering the mouse so he could replay the recording. “Sorry to keep you behind after school.”

  “Ha!” said Stevens. “It’s like fucking karma or something.”

  Both Pattimore and Abbott ignored him and kept their attention on the screen.

  “It’s quite all right,” said Alfred Abbott. “Invariably, I’m the last to leave. Long after the cleaning staff have worked their wonders, most nights.”

  Pattimore looked sideways at the balding, slightly built man and couldn’t tell if his smile was tinged with pride or sadness. “And you’re quite sure you don’t recognise any of the youths involved?”

  Abbott pursed his thin lips. “Need I point out they are all wearing hooded jackets?”

  “No, you needn’t,” said Pattimore.

  “Wait! There! Freeze it!” Abbott pointed a finger at a fuzzy figure. “Go back - just a tad.”

  Pattimore manoeuvred the mouse. The action on screen lurched into rewind. Stevens laughed to see spilled milk gather itself into a carton and fly through the air and into a hand.

  “Stop it there!” Mr Abbott’s finger tapped the screen. “That belligerent stance! I would know it anywhere. I have had cause to make that fellow stand up in Assembly many times and I recognise the slope of those narrow shoulders.”

  “You know him!” Stevens marvelled. “Even without seeing his mug?”

  “Inspector Stevens,” Mr Abbott gave the detective a patronising smile. “It is in my interests to know every single one of the children who walk through our gates. I have been employed at this school all my adult life. Further to that, I was a pupil here myself. There is nothing that goes on here about which I do not know.”

  Stevens found himself wilting beneath the deputy head’s scrutiny even though the detective was almost two feet taller than the didact.

  “So...” Pattimore’s pencil was poised. “What’s his name?”

  “Lawrence. Logan Lawrence, known colloquially, I believe, as Logger.”

  Pattimore jotted all this down. “And do you have an address for this Logan Lawrence?”

  “Not memorised, of course, but it is the work of seconds to access the database.”

  “Good. We should very much like to have a chinwag with Logan Lawrence.”

  “I doubt you will get much from him,” Abbott heaved his shoulders. “A few Neanderthal grunts is the best you can hope for. I am not saying the boy is what we used to call remedial but, well, sometimes I despair of the youth of today and most of the time I despair for the school. I mean, how are we supposed to maintain our ranking in the league tables when our clientele is of that - that-” he waved at the frozen image, “calibre.”

  “You sound very passionate,” Pattimore observed.

  “I am! This school has been my life and I cannot bear to see it failing.”

  “Is it failing?”

  “Well, no. Not quite. Not yet. But it will, the way things are going.”

  “And which way are things going?”

  Mr Abbott exhaled a lengthy sigh. “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that information is not yet within the public domain.”

  Pattimore glanced around at their surroundings. “We’re in a private office.”

  “Let me just say change is coming.”

  “Not all change is bad.”

  The deputy head shook his deputised head. Weariness clouded his features. “I have seen all sorts of things come and go. First, we merged with the girls’ high school - it’s a car park now on the other side of the field - then we lost our status as a grammar school, but we mustered our mettle and worked hard to become the best damned comprehensive in the whole of Dedley. We retained as much of our former grammar school prestige as we could. Then we were amalgamated with Squirrel’s Hole High, lost the old girls’ high building and it has all been downhill from there, I am afraid. Oh, we got a couple of new wings built on and the Science block, in order to accommodate the additional intake - you may have noticed the garish red brick add-ons. Quite at odds with some of the older parts of the structure - old Emmanuel would spin in his grave. He was the first headmaster. The school was established over four hundred years ago to lift the boys of Dedley out of ignorance and want.”

  He tried not to notice D I Stevens picking his nose.

  “You see, in the old days - I mean, the more recent old days, not the first days of Baxter Emmanuel - the likes of Logan Lawrence would have gone to Squirrel’s Hole where he could have run amok and no harm done to their examination results. He and his cronies might even have come away with a C.S.E. in Woodwork rather than infecting some of our brighter students with their indolence, impudence and insolence. I have always been of the opinion that the Squirrel’s Hole refugees should have been sent down to Hangham -
which is in a permanent state of ‘special measures’ - but they are full up too. Oversubscribed! That dump!”

  Stevens yawned; Pattimore nudged him.

  “You mentioned his cronies,” Pattimore prompted, demonstrating his talent for sifting out the pertinent information from the deputy head’s waffle. “Are you able to identify any of them?”

  “Not from the playback, no. But our friend Logger is invariably in the company of Duncan Dogberry, a.k.a. Dogger, and a third boy who displays all the perspicacity of a mouldering potato. His real name eludes me, I am afraid, but he goes by the informal moniker of Bonk.”

  Stevens sniggered. “Logger, Dogger and Bonk! Weren’t they the three pixies on the cereal box?”

  “I would say imps rather than pixies,” sniffed Mr Abbott. “Fledgling demons.”

  Pattimore scribbled a few hasty notes. “Now, this change that’s coming.”

  Mr Abbott shook his head. “Doomed to failure, right from the off. My school has become a shithouse, a repository for all the turds pushed out by the uncaring parents of the borough. Dressing it up in glitter is not going to change that.”

  “Mr Abbott, what are you talking about?”

  “It’s that supermarket, isn’t it?” he spat at the screen. “Or rather its brash and boorish owner. He wants to sponsor my school when it turns into an - an - I can barely bring myself to say the word - an academy!”

  He pulled a face that suggested he had just French-kissed a lemon.

  Stevens blinked. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  Mr Abbott’s face darkened. “That oaf - and more than a few oafs in our benighted government - seem to think one can run a school as a business. It goes against every educational tenet and belief I hold dear. It-”

  Pattimore stood, cutting him off. “Well, we won’t go into all of that right now. Thank you for your time, Mr Abbott. You have been very helpful.”

  Mr Abbott inclined his head in a bow. “Always happy to assist the boys in blue. Even,” he cocked an eyebrow at Stevens’s tan leather jacket, “when they are not actually in blue. Allow me to walk you out.”

  At the door, Stevens turned back to prolong the meeting. “Almost forgot!” he rolled his eyes at his own absent-mindedness. “Does the name Barker mean anything to you? Paul Barker?”

  Mr Abbott’s face was inscrutable. “He is one of our governors. The chair, no less.”

  “Not no more he ain’t,” said Stevens flatly. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh?” Mr Abbott’s expression did not change. “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Murdered,” Stevens continued. “They found him this morning. Strangled in the park.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Garrotted, actually.”

  “That is unpleasant.”

  “Not half.”

  “This is distressing news,” said Mr Abbott, although neither detective thought he looked particularly distressed.

  “Goodnight, sir,” said Pattimore with a curt smile.

  “Yeah,” added Stevens.

  They did not speak until they were ensconced in Stevens’s Capri.

  “Boring old fart,” was Stevens’s assessment. “Imagine spending all your life in one job.”

  Pattimore flicked through his notes. “We need to find this Logger kid.”

  “Didn’t seem to like kids much, did he? Why does he stick with the job if he don’t like kids? Miserable git. It ain’t the kids’ fault they come from depraved backgrounds.”

  “Deprived,” Pattimore muttered.

  “Fuck off, Brough! Did you see his face? When we told him Barker was dead. He didn’t seem all that surprised. And I’m sure I saw a little bit of a smile creeping onto his lips...”

  “We must be careful not to read too much into that,” Pattimore advised. “People react in all sorts of ways to bad news.”

  “Seems to me he was trying very hard not to take it as good news.”

  “And why would he do that? What could he have to gain by the death of a school governor?”

  “The chair, no less,” Stevens mocked Abbott’s pompous tones. “Something to think about it, ain’t it? At the pub.”

  “All right,” said Pattimore. “The pub.”

  ***

  By the time those pixies, those fledgling demons, Logger, Dogger and Bonk got to Field Park, it was all cordoned off and crawling with coppers. The bandstand was surrounded by a huge, blue tent and SOCOs in white bodysuits busied themselves in and out of it.

  “What a swizz,” Logger muttered.

  “He’s probably miles away by now,” added Dogger. “Being cut up on a slab.”

  “Ugh,” said Bonk.

  Dogger brightened. “If we hurry up, we might be home in time for the local news. Bound to be something on there.”

  “Like on the telly?” Bonk frowned. “Is Dedley going to be on the telly?”

  “Bound to be,” said Dogger.

  “Wow!” Bonk enthused. Their home town hadn’t attracted much media attention since that time when they were making a film about a hospital or something and that Oscar Buzz had come over from Hollywood and everything. “I’d best be off any road,” Bonk’s face clouded. “My brother’s going to kill me.”

  “Then Dedley’ll be on tomorrow night and all,” said Logger.

  “Coo,” said Bonk.

  He and Dogger hurried away from the park gates. Logger dawdled. He was reluctant to go home, certain the Boss would call him. Yes, well, the Boss could call him anywhere, at any time, but at home, Logger felt confined. Hemmed in. Things were spiralling out of control. Cause disruption, he’d been told. It was what he was being paid for. But now there was a murder. The very man they were supposed to target next had turned up dead in Field Park. Logger paled; it had been a narrow escape. If they’d gone through with the plan, if they’d sent those photographs...

  That would have been the specky twat’s job. Uploading the photos to Barker’s laptop, his smartphone and his ‘cloud’, whatever that was.

  Now there was no need. The good ship Blackmail had been scuppered and sunk before they had boarded it.

  Thank fuck.

  Perhaps with the bloke dead and blackmail no longer an option, they wouldn’t need the specky twat in the gang anymore. It wasn’t as though he was a proper member anyway. Where was he now, for example? He hadn’t wanted to come and get a look at the body, the chicken shit. He’d mumbled something and buggered off. Urgent Maths homework or some bollocks. The specky twat.

  The phone in Logger’s pocket vibrated, making him jump. Guess who! He considered declining the call or letting it ring through to voicemail, but that would only defer the unpleasantness.

  “Yo!” he answered, his voice cracking.

  “Good evening, Lawrence. I learn from the news that the next phase of our plan has been derailed.”

  “I don’t think it was a train crash.”

  “Please abandon all attempts at humour. With Barker gone, we can move to the next stage. You still have the photographs?”

  “Um, yeah. They’m on the new kid’s phone.”

  “Excellent. Then we simply swap recipients. How familiar are you with Dedley Council?”

  The question threw Logger. He forced himself to concentrate. “I know me mom pays them rent and moans when they don’t take the rubbish.”

  “In that case, I am sending you a file. A photo of the man and his contact details. Get those snaps uploaded by tomorrow night. We must keep applying pressure.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “No buts, Lawrence. You will, of course, receive your next emolument when the thing is done.”

  “Emo what now?”

  “Payment - Perhaps if you attended a few more lessons, you’d know that.”

  The
line went dead. Logger poked his tongue out at the screen. If I went to school all day, Mr Boss Man, I wouldn’t be able to do half the stuff you pay me to do.

  The phone buzzed - a raspberry in response to Logger’s own. An email had come through. Logger decided he would rather wait until he was safely shut up in his room before he opened it.

  ***

  “Pasta’s ready!” Melanie Miller called out. Steam clouded the kitchen sink while she shook the spaghetti in a colander. “Darren!” she called again.

  There was no response. He did not emerge from the bedroom until Miller had plated up the food and poured drinks. Wine for herself and water for him.

  “Sorry, Mel; I was on the phone.” He waved his mobile as evidence.

  “It’s all right,” said Miller, sharply sucking a strand of spaghetti.

  Darren sat and tucked a napkin into the collar of his polo shirt. “Looks lovely. Thanks.” He pushed the food around, twisting it onto his fork. “Is this...”

  “It’s not real mince,” Miller assured him. “It’s that soya protein stuff. David recommends it.”

  “Ah!” He tucked into the meal with more gusto. Miller wondered whether it was because of the healthy nature of the food or because of who had endorsed it.

  She was willing to bet that was who he had been calling. Detective Inspector David bleeding Brough. Handsome, homosexual David bleeding Brough.

  She took a gulp of wine, steeling herself to broach the subject head on. “So, how did it go with David?”

  “Who?”

  “David Brough. You had a training session with him today.”

  “Oh, him!” Darren chuckled. “All right. Good, actually. Right up until we found that dead body.”

  “Oh. Yes. And will you be seeing him again?”

  “Shouldn’t think so. Wasn’t planning on going to the funeral.”

  “Not the dead body! Brough! David!”

  “Um, I expect so. We haven’t fixed anything up for deffo yet. I expect you’ll be busy.”

  “Will I?”

  “Both of you. Because of the dead body.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes. Crusty bread?” she proffered the basket.