The Good Teacher

by Rachel Sargeant

  After a while, I break the silence. “Where are we going?”

  “To the attempted kidnap scene.”

  “Oh, right. Good,” I say, trying to sound on the ball. When Matthews doesn’t elaborate, I add, “Where is that exactly?”

  “A house in Southside.” He touches the brake to give the car in front time to turn off.

  “Who’s been kidnapped?” I ask. “Is it a siege situation?”

  “I don’t think we’d put you through a siege on day one.”

  I feel myself reddening and the silence returns. He seemed innocuous at the interview. What little I can remember of him was of someone sympathetic, about my age, on my side. Perhaps he isn’t as young as I first thought. There’s a slight furrowing on his forehead as he concentrates on the driving but the rest of his face is line-free. In his late twenties? Five years my senior at most. He’s clean-shaven – the sort of man Mum would approve of, except for the haircut, if you can call it that. Wild Afro extends as far as his shirt collar. It puts me in mind of my father’s photographs of touring Jamaican musicians in his early days with the Midlandia Symphonic. Odd that Matthews takes care over the rest of his appearance but has hair left over from the 1970s.

  He turns the steering wheel to take a left and catches me looking. I cover my embarrassment by asking another question. “Have the kidnappers been arrested?”

  “They tied up a Mrs Gaby Brock in her own home and scarpered. Uniform found her.” He moves out past a parked car.

  “Who reported it?” I ask, gaining confidence. I seem to have persuaded him to brief me about the case.

  “No one.” He flicks the indicator and turns left again, yanking down the sun visor against the head-on sunlight. We’re in a residential district – rows of tight terraces with postage-stamp front gardens.

  “How did we know to look for her?” I choose the word “we” carefully. I can’t bring myself to say “uniform”, not ready to detach myself from my former colleagues.

  “Because her husband was found murdered this morning in a ditch at Martle Top, close to his own car, by a pensioner on his bicycle. Stabbed in the chest. Knife by the body.” He looks at me, apparently hoping for some sign of revulsion.

  He’s read me right. As my stomach muscles clench, I make a desperate attempt at humour. “It sounds like an Agatha Christie to me.”

  I realize my mistake even before all the words are out. Matthews takes his eyes off the road and looks me full in the face. “You what?”

  My mouth still not shut, more words tumble out. “In many of her novels, the murderer sets up the scene. You can tell—”

  Matthews touches the brakes, nudging us both against our seat belts. “Agatha Christie. Now I’ve heard everything. Don’t tell me I’m working with Miss Marple for the next six months,” he says, not smiling.

  “It was a joke.” Don’t detectives have a sense of humour? I’m suddenly homesick for the camaraderie of uniform. Getting through the day with easy banter and Sergeant Conway treating us like favourite nieces and nephews.

  Matthews puts the car into gear and continues at a slower pace. We enter a leafy residential area that I recognize as Southside, so named when the town was little more than a village. These days it would be more aptly called Eastside, the town having sprawled out below it.

  “This isn’t a joke,” he says angrily. “Know the facts before you laugh about it. These are real-life victims. Gaby Brock was found lying on the floor, shackled to a chair in her own lounge. There was a chain round her legs and across her chest. Her wrists were handcuffed to the chair legs. The keys for the padlocks were in the pocket of the pyjamas she was wearing when uniform got there. And before you get any other fanciful ideas, she couldn’t have snapped the cuffs shut on her own arms and then pocketed the keys.”

  “Has the victim been able to say anything?” I try to make my voice sound brisk and efficient.

  “They were asleep when two men burst in, gave them both a beating, made her husband tie her up and then dragged him out of the house. It appears they took him to Martle Top in his own car and knifed him. Sounds like drugs to me. Shades of the Easter Day shooting in Briggham.”

  I’ve heard of the Briggham case. It’s said to have all the hallmarks of a gangland contract. I feel a twinge of excitement at the thought of what this new case might involve, but decide against quipping to Matthews that he needs to know his facts before judging it to be drugs-related. Somehow I don’t think he’d see the funny side.

  He switches off the engine as we pull up across a driveway in a short road of newish detached houses, their dull frontages enhanced by conifers and flowering shrubs. Several hydrangeas are in full bloom at the house in front of us. Someone has stuck a pint of milk under one. But what sets this house apart from its neighbours is the blue and white Police Do Not Cross tape all round its perimeter and a police officer, whom I don’t know, standing outside the open front door. When she sees Matthews, she lets us step under the tape without question.

  From the doorstep we can see that the house is alive with scenes of crime staff in their white forensic suits, looking through waste bins, checking drawers, and examining carpets with an E-vac. One of the forensic scientists in the hallway looks up and raises his hand in a latex glove. “Long time, no see, Mike.”

  “Hello, Dave,” DS Matthews calls as he slips on his forensic suit. “Didn’t expect to be working with you again. I thought your team had moved to Briggham.”

  “We have. Got put on to this job by the ACC himself.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Matthews replies.

  “It does me. I’d expected separate teams here and at Martle Top to avoid crosscontamination, but not the cavalry.”

  “Depends who the senior investigating officer is,” Matthews says.

  “Who?”

  “Liz Bagley.”

  Dave grins. “Is it true what they say about her?”

  “What do you think?” Matthews replies. “She’s persuaded the assistant chief constable to cough up the staff, hasn’t she?”

  “Inspector Bagley?” Dave leers. “Expect a Shagley more like.”

  Both men laugh but stop when they remember I’m there. Matthews glowers at me and I brace myself for another tongue-lashing, but he just asks me to put on coveralls and check on progress upstairs.

  Once suited up, I enter the house and walk up the narrow, carpeted staircase. The bathroom is at the top of the stairs, tidy and ordinary. Apart from a plastic cup on the washbasin containing two toothbrushes and a tube of paste, and two dry towels hanging over the bath, the bathroom suite is clean and free of clutter. I lift the lid on the wicker laundry basket even though the kidnappers are unlikely to have stopped off to do the washing. The basket is about a third full of what looks like pale tops and white underwear – quite unlike the overflowing colour riot of my linen bin. I let the lid fall and turn to the wall-mounted cabinet. Inside is a neat arrangement of cut-price shampoo, shaving foam and razor, full-coverage foundation, concealer and a powder compact. The only person I’ve known with such an immaculate bathroom cabinet (but without the make-up) is my father after he left my mother and before he married Joanne. I close the cabinet and head into a bedroom.

  Chapter 3

  Across town Bartholomew Hedges climbs down his ladder. He can’t work. He tells himself it’s the heat, but knows it isn’t. The fair weather is his friend, kind for completing the exterior paintwork. The Lord shines the sun on him. He should be getting on; the customer has started asking questions. Bartholomew can’t blame the dormer roof for much longer.

  As he replaces his brush in the paint can, some of the white undercoat slops onto the patio. He scoops it back in with his palette knife and removes the rest of the stain with white spirit. He sprinkles more spirit on his hands and wipes them down with the rag from the pocket of his shorts.

  His fingers aren’t clean, but pale like a white man’s. He needs a wash down with soap and water. But he doesn’t wan
t to go into the house as the customer’s wife is at home. She might ask him why he’s stopped again.

  He sits on the edge of the patio. The step down to the lawn is low and his paint-flecked knees come up high in front of him. The grass is yellow, even though he’s seen the owners using a sprinkler every evening. He’s heard them talking of having it re-turfed – as soon as the decorating’s finished. He sighs. Perhaps he should tell them that God will replenish their lawn long before Hedges House Painting Services retouches their eaves.

  He’s surprised they gave him the contract at all. He knows the man didn’t want to and he can’t blame him. As far as he was concerned Bartholomew had already proved himself unreliable. In February he’d been due to start on their dining room – a big job to take off the Anaglypta wall covering, cross line it and paint over in mushroom gold. Bartholomew had to cancel at two weeks’ notice when he couldn’t find his steam stripper. It would have taken a month of God’s sacred Sundays to scrape off Anaglypta without a steamer.

  The machine disappeared from the back of his van one night, but there’d been no sign of a break-in. Had he forgotten to lock the van? Convincing himself that it was his own foolish mistake, he hadn’t gone to the police or contacted his insurance company. Back then, the possibility that someone else could get hold of the van key hadn’t crossed his mind. Bartholomew wipes his chin with his forearm and wonders whether that suspicion had been in his head all along but he’d chosen to ignore it. February? Were the signs already there?

  He shuffles along the patio edge to his toolbox. Underneath his Thermos flask of Cherry Tango is his Bible, wrapped in a plastic bag. He longs to take it out, ask it the questions, and seek solace. But he can’t touch it until he’s washed his hands.

  The same passage comes into his mind. It’s been there almost constantly for three weeks now. Proverbs 10: 1: “A wise son makes his father proud of him; a foolish one brings his mother grief.” The words have been pressing against his brain ever since he saw his own son, Saul, being … doing …

  He shivers. The fear comes back and he thinks of Job 20: 16: “What the evil man swallows is like poison.” Is Saul evil? Every day he prays for a sign, for the Lord to reassure him. Bartholomew needs to know that the evil lies elsewhere, not in a boy like Saul. Again and again he’s asked Saul why he did it. Saul says it’s like falling into cotton wool. It lets him find a warm and happy place that he wants to keep going back to. Where did Bartholomew go wrong? He’s found comfort from a life of faith. Why hasn’t Saul found it there, too?

  A scenes of crime officer dusts a bedside locker while another hunts through drawers. I look at the unmade double bed that the Brocks must have been dragged from in the night. The room’s simply furnished – a large pine wardrobe and matching dressing table – again tidy, no lipsticks or perfume bottles in sight.

  The second bedroom looks like an advert for an office suppliers. A black swivel chair slots underneath a desk as if it’s never been used. Even the few sheets of printed papers on top lie in a perfect pile. A plastic dust sheet covers the computer. The blotting pad looks fresh and a single ballpoint pokes out of a pen-tidy. The only incongruous item is a birdcage, complete with a bell and a seed hopper, under the desk. Two forensic officers come in behind me, so I leave them to begin a detailed search.

  Whereas the rest of the upstairs appears sterile, the third bedroom is a surprise. Three walls are bright yellow and the fourth displays a magnificent hand-painted circus scene. Trapeze artists fly across the red and white striped backdrop of the big top. Clowns juggle silver hoops and two white horses rear up at each other. It must have taken someone days to complete. In the middle of the room is a large cot with a clown motif mattress, but no bedding. The drawers of the nappy changing unit next to it are empty.

  I go downstairs, psyching myself up for the next round with Matthews.

  He’s on his mobile, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. “No, ma’am, nothing of interest so far. They’ve bagged up a few bits and pieces.”

  I wander into the kitchen. Dave, the forensic scientist, kneels at the opened back door, scraping at a broken pane of glass. I look beyond him into the garden. Typical new-estate small, the paved patio is surrounded on three sides by conifers.

  Two familiar figures come round the side of the house and I smile in relief. “Anything interesting?” I call.

  “Hi, Pippa, good to see you. Nothing out here,” PC John Whitton says, coming towards the doorstep. “But Forensics pulled some clothes out of the washing machine. They want to check whether anyone’s tried to wash away evidence.”

  “Unlikely though,” PC Kieran Clarke says. “It’s a towel and a few men’s shirts and trousers, probably the husband’s. We won’t find any bloodstains. All his blood is spread across Martle Top.” He gives a half-hearted chuckle.

  “The relief’s missing you already,” John says. “So how are you getting on in CID?”

  The thought of my day so far makes my insides clench but I manage a breezy “Fine”. Trying not to sound desperate, I say how glad I am to see them again and go back through the kitchen.

  The lounge curtains, closed when the police broke in, are now pushed back to let maximum daylight onto the crime scene. With the light comes the fire of a midsummer day. My hand goes to undo my jacket but the protective suit is in the way. Apart from the pungent smell of forensic chemicals sprinkled into the carpet, the room is orderly. Matching cushions on the sofa and paperbacks on the small bookcase. Red roses on the coffee table and a cheap carriage clock on the mantelpiece, but otherwise no ornaments or photos.

  My own small lounge has every available space crammed with photos: old ones of Mum and Dad in the same frame; one of Dad’s wedding to Joanne and several of their son, Jamie, from newborn to the current cheeky eight-year-old. But no photos in this house, no clues to the occupants.

  I kneel over the kitchen chair in the middle of the room and get a whiff of the oily scent left by the fingerprint experts. Hard to know what colour the chair is under its dosing of white powder. A pale wood, perhaps, and there are several paint spots, evidence that the chair has been a makeshift decorating ladder before its latest incarnation as a prison for Gaby Brock. Some of the spots are summer yellow and partly obscured by splodges of blue. The circus room with its yellow walls probably wasn’t the most recent project.

  On the bookcase, two shelves of light romances mingle with classic horror, and another shelf of paperback textbooks. Understanding Shakespeare; Yoga Postures; Towards the National Curriculum; Modern Grammar; Advanced Yoga. Which books belonged to the husband and what will the wife do with them now?

  Dave, the forensics officer, puts his head around the door. “Tell Mike Matthews I’m off. I’ll have my initial report ready this afternoon.”

  “Ok, I’ll tell him. It was nice meeting you,” I say.

  Dave grins. “You too, Agatha”. Then he’s gone.

  My cheeks burn. Matthews must have told him about my failed Agatha Christie joke. It wasn’t that funny, was it?

  PC Kieran Clarke appears at the door. “Mike Matthews wants us to make a start on the house-to-house enquiries. Find out if anyone saw Brock’s Mondeo leaving in the middle of the night.” He pauses to give his face time to break into a smirk. “So you’d better hurry up, Agatha.”

  There’s more danger that her Jimmy Choo heels will pierce the forensic overshoes and sink into the melting tarmac of the Martle Top road than they will bury themselves in the dried-out grass verge, but force of habit makes DI Liz Bagley tiptoe to the edge of the ditch. She shouts across to the kneeling figure of SOCO Steve Chisholm.

  “Anything?”

  He stands up. “Not much. There are some tyre tracks on the grass over there.” He looks towards a patch of ground a few feet ahead. “From a bicycle, I think. The grass is flattened as if someone’s laid a bike down.”

  “That fits. The man who found the body was on a bike. Where’s Dr Spicer?”

  Chisholm points t
o the white incident tent a few metres behind him. “In there with the victim.” He folds his arms, a half-smile hovering over his mouth.

  In that moment Liz hates him. Clockwise Chisholm might be the station’s resident anorak, with his hand semipermanently stuck up the back of a computer, but he’s astute enough to realize that, to get to the tent, she’ll have to cross the ditch. Its banks could harbour a few wet spots despite the heatwave. She isn’t going arse over tits for anyone.

  “Get me a plank,” she says.

  “I’ll call DC Holtom.”

  “Not that sort of plank.”

  Chisholm grins. “I meant he’s got the bridge.”

  “Tell him to be quick,” she says, cursing herself for not bringing her wellies. She took them out of the car caked in mud weeks before, but forgot to put them back.

  DC Holtom comes over with a duckboard. She steps across the ditch, placing one foot deliberately in front of the other. Her expression hardens against the curious gazes of Chisholm and Holtom. No way is she giving them the satisfaction of seeing her slip.

  At least DS Mike Matthews isn’t here. He’d enjoy watching her walk the plank. The man is dire. So polite and correct, apart from his outsize broomstick hair. “Yes, ma’am, certainly ma’am. If you want me to, ma’am.” But behind the plodding reliability, Liz has the feeling he’s waiting for her to fall flat on her face. It’s a good thing he’ll be preoccupied from now on with supervising DC Adams. He’ll be too busy keeping that towering toddler on her feet to trip up his detective inspector.

  Matthews and DCI Hendersen did the interviews for the vacancy, so it’s their fault they’ve ended up with a girl trainee. Lads are much easier to knock the corners off. They’re a bit wet behind the iPhone, but they know who’s boss. Women, on the other hand, make loose cannons.

  Liz complained to John Wise about it, of course. That’s lover’s perks. But Assistant Chief Constable Wise was non-committal. There was no suggestion, on his part anyway, of wading into Hendersen’s office and pulling rank.