A Shred of Evidence (3 page)

Patrick had become a frequent visitor, whether Colin was there or not, and he had never really given up; she had seen more of Patrick than she had of Colin during the summer. But Colin liked him too; they had become friends. Patrick had, of course, found consolation elsewhere, but that wouldn’t prevent him starting something with her if she would let him. He was engagingly open about it, though she doubted if his wife found it all that attractive a trait.

The season proper had started then, and Colin had been away most of the time. She had still resisted Patrick’s advances, which were by then made purely because it was expected of him. She liked the mild flirtation, but she had not been tempted, not then, because she had thought that perhaps she had misjudged Colin, that there really was nothing to the letter she had found. She had thought that once the season was over, once he’d finished with all the athletics meetings, he’d find time for her again, but that wasn’t how it had worked out.

She wouldn’t have believed it was possible to feel so lonely, but Colin was out practically every night again, doing whatever it was he did, and she was at a permanent loose end.

He had said the letter was just some silly little girl indulging some fantasy. Perhaps it was; perhaps if all those silly little girls who wrote to him knew what it was like to live with their heart-throb, they wouldn’t be so keen. Erica hardly saw him; when he did come home, it was to flop into bed and go to sleep.

She still felt lonely. She still felt unwanted. And she still didn’t really know what Colin did when he was out at night.

* * *

Hannah saw Colin Cochrane too, and watched him until he went out of sight, her thin, pointed face lit with the intensity of her feelings for him. She wore her long dark hair down; it would be a little more comfortable up in this hot weather, but he had once said that it suited her down, and now she wore it no other way.

The others had gone; she would be late for her next lesson, but she didn’t care. Every glimpse of Colin was precious. He lived on Ash Road, in one of the houses set back below the level of the road, behind a bank of trees. A whole gang of girls from school used to go there last term and climb the trees to try to catch a glimpse of him and his new wife and their dog—a weird creature with more skin than it needed when it was a puppy—until he asked them not to because his wife didn’t like it.

Hannah hated Erica Cochrane. Hated her for marrying Colin in the first place, hated her for stopping them going to the house. They hadn’t been doing any harm—they weren’t Erica Cochrane’s own personal trees. So she had carried on going there, until it had struck her that that was just kids’ stuff. From that moment, she had worked hard to put her relationship with Colin on a much more personal footing, one that might break up the marriage, with any luck.

Colin only took the boys for sports, so she didn’t get the chance to talk to him at all during school hours. At least he was still in the drama group, and they were meeting tonight. They would just be discussing possible productions, though, so she wouldn’t be able to wander up and start a would-be-casual conversation; they would be sitting down, talking, like a formal meeting.

But that didn’t matter, because she would see him later on, and there wouldn’t be anyone else around then.

Patrick Murray was spending some of his lunch hour trying to get himself acquainted with the school, which had been built in the fifties to house four hundred pupils and had been extended and added on to and partitioned until it now accommodated
eight hundred and fifty. There were several annexes—one was a mile away, across the Green.

The Green was a piece of common land down on Ash Road, too small to be called a common, too unstructured to be called park, that linked the east side of the town, the older, more established part, to the centre of the new town created in the fifties.

Even that older part dated back only to the thirties, when Mitchell Engineering arrived to set up its once-enormous operation. What had been there before was a tiny, one-horse village. It was still there, that piece of the sixteenth century; a little oasis of history in this relentlessly modern desert.

Patrick’s knowledge of the town was much more extensive than his knowledge of the school, which he just found bewildering, even after Colin had shown him round.

Colin was the first friend Patrick had made in Stansfield, or to be more accurate, and more honest, Colin’s wife was the first friend he had made. Colin had left her on her own for hours on end, and Victoria, Patrick’s wife, had been in two minds about joining him in Stansfield. Erica was a very attractive girl, and Patrick would be Patrick. He hadn’t cracked that particular nut yet, but it was fun trying. Sure, what was life for, if it wasn’t to be enjoyed?

And what made Patrick’s life enjoyable was the opposite sex. And snooker, and jazz, and teaching, of course. And tinkering with cars and reading books, and seeing plays … but all these things went down even better with a girl by your side, if you asked Patrick.

It had got him into trouble before, and he was going to have to execute some very fancy footwork if it wasn’t to get him into trouble now. But Patrick preferred not to think too hard about things that might disrupt his enjoyable life.

He had almost forgotten why he’d had to leave his last place—an eminent public school with an impeccable record which Patrick had done nothing as regards his teaching to besmirch—but his close acquaintance with a female member of staff had caused Victoria to create a bit of a scene in front of a group of parents who were looking round the school.

There was no real harm done. They had had their sons’ names down from birth; there was no way they were backing out, even if they had found Victoria’s outburst a bit on the embarrassing side. But the school had very politely asked him if he might not be happier elsewhere, like by Easter. That, Patrick had to admit, had not been the first time they had had occasion to talk to him about his enjoyment of life. It was just the first time Victoria had made a public fuss.

They would be prepared to tell any prospective employer that they were letting him leave before the end of the academic year to pursue private studies, he had been told, but he had to go.

Patrick wandered round, eavesdropping on conversations as the kids took their lunch break, and he thought that it was entirely possible that he would indeed be happier here. There was no class system in operation, either in the school or the town, and that was refreshing, to say the least, in England’s green and pleasant, especially after his last place.

Yes, he could be very happy here. Providing he boxed clever, of course.

Natalie Ouspensky sat on the low wall which ran along the front of the school, eating her packed lunch with a group of other girls, but not taking part in the endless conversations about boys that the others were having. It bored her now, all the boasting and baiting.

“Barry’s dead worried because he thinks I’m pregnant,” Julie said.

Natalie doubted that Julie had ever been with a boy in her life, but to hear her talk you would swear she was on the game. Natalie had been with boys, but they bored her too, with their frantic fumblings and their crude goals, because she had a man. A grown man, who knew what it was all about. She wasn’t interested in what Barry or anyone else had or—more probably—had not done with Julie.

But there were problems with the relationship. There always had been, but they had been on the horizon, and she had shut them out of her mind. She couldn’t do that any more, not now.
She was determined not to lose him, and she had to think about what she was going to do.

“There’s Mr. Murray,” said Claire, in a stage whisper.

They all cast covert glances as he passed.

“He’s nice, isn’t he?” sighed Claire.

“Is that him?” asked Hannah. “The new teacher?”

“Yes,” said Claire. “He wrote rude words on the board this morning,” she added, with a blush. “Really rude. We didn’t know who’d done it, but it turned out he’d done it himself.”

“He never,” said Julie.

“He did, didn’t he, Natalie?”

“What?” Natalie looked up.

“Mr. Murray wrote all those words on the board.”

“Yes.”

“See! I told you!”

“What words?” asked Hannah.

“You tell her,” said Claire to Natalie.

“Tell her yourself.”

“No! They were rude.”

“Oh, grow up!” snapped Natalie.

Claire went into a huff; Kim eventually told them what he had written.

Natalie sighed as the others giggled. All except Hannah, who was merely looking puzzled.

“Why did he?” she asked, but those who knew were giggling too much to tell her, and Natalie was too preoccupied.

They were all so childish.

Detective Sergeant Tom Finch was in the DI’s office, being chewed out. No arrests, no recovered property, nothing except the blame for a useless exercise and a lecture to double-check his informant’s integrity.

“Someone tipped them off, Tom,” she said. “And it obviously wasn’t the purchasers, or they wouldn’t have been there.”

“I don’t think he set us up, guv,” he said. “Something went wrong.”

“Maybe they’re still trying to get through the one-way system in Malworth,” she said, smiling at last.

“You could live somewhere closer at hand,” said Tom, grinning. Everyone knew that DCI Lloyd and his acting Chief Inspector were more than just good friends, though they liked to pretend it was a secret.

Her eyes widened slightly at the remark, and Tom felt uncomfortable. It was a very subtle piece of rank-pulling as a result of unsubtle teasing, and he was being put in his place.

“Well, now that we’ve wasted an entire morning, let’s get on,” she said. “I may as well sign your expenses now.”

Tom smiled.

She smiled back, a professional smile. “Do you have those receipts?” she asked.

Tom’s jaw fell. “I told you I’d lost them,” he said.

“I assumed you would look for them.”

“I did! I know what must have happened—I must have thrown them out by mistake with that other lot … I’ve told you all this,” he said.

“But you haven’t produced them,” she said.

“Oh, come on!” said Tom. “Those expenses were legit—I shelled out the money! I’m entitled to get it back.”

“I’ve no doubt they are,” she said. “But I have to justify them. I can’t just take your word for it. I need receipts, Tom.”

“But you know I had to go to Liverpool! You told me to go! So you can sign it without the receipts!”

“Why would I want to do that?” she said. “You could take advantage of me if I started doing that.”

Tom ran a hand over his face. It might not seem like a lot of money to her, but she didn’t have kids growing out of clothes and shoes and a mortgage she could barely afford.

“I’m owed that money,” he said. “I need it.” He did. He was taking Liz out for an anniversary dinner on Friday that was going to cost a bomb.

“You should have taken better care of the receipts, in that case.”

Tom looked at the implacable brown eyes that still held his, and swallowed. He had worked with her for almost a year, and
had got, he had believed, to know her pretty well. He had warned other people not to be taken in by the big brown eyes; he had told new recruits to the department that she was easy-going and friendly, didn’t even like being called ma’am, but that there was a line, and you overstepped it at your peril.

But he had said that she was fair, and he’d been wrong, obviously, because this wasn’t fair. Liz would kill him.

The inspector grinned suddenly. “The claim’s on your desk,” she said. “Authorized. It has been since half past three yesterday afternoon—if you ever did any paperwork, you’d have found it.”

Tom blew out his cheeks and looked at her for some time before he spoke. “Sorry,” he said. “I was out of order.”

“If and when I want advice concerning my domestic arrangements,” she said seriously, “I really will ask for it.”

He had been well and truly kippered. She had done him for his manners, his carelessness, and his reluctance to do anything approaching paperwork all in one neat movement. And conned him rotten into the bargain.

“And, Tom—the paperwork on that aggravated burglary has got to be done today.” She smiled sweetly at him. “Your desk’s the one nearest the window,” she reminded him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. And grinned back.

It was nice to know that he wasn’t that bad a judge of character after all.

By the time he had worked up another two good honest sweats in the gym and got rid of another two lots of kids, by the time he had had yet another shower, and slicked down his hair in the mirror, by the time he had sat beside Trudy in the dining hall and was eating to the unholy noise of adolescent table talk, Colin had forgotten all about the letter.

He sat with Trudy because Erica almost always brought sandwiches to eat in the office, or if, as today, the weather was kind, out in the sunshine, with a book for company. Colin read books in bed; Trudy’s was the sort of company he preferred at lunchtime. He made no bones about enjoying admiration, which was one of the reasons that he had such a large following; he had no time for those in the public eye who professed to shun publicity.

Colin was that elusive animal, the television personality. He liked being recognized in the street, and he liked knowing that he could be famous full time if he wanted to; he was increasingly in demand for chat shows, game shows, studio panels—you name it, Colin had done a guest appearance on it. Advertisements were the most lucrative form of exposure, and now they wanted him for a whole series of ads for men’s toiletries. But he wasn’t quite ready yet to throw himself completely into the spotlight, to depend entirely for his living on the fickle public, who might very well have a different favourite this time next year.

But as long as he was running, the school would give him a steady income and time off when he needed it, so his present situation suited him admirably. And as long as he did nothing
to incur the displeasure of his adoring public, he could have the best of both worlds.