Death of a Teacher (24 page)

All afternoon, Liz fretted about what Callie had meant. And about why Ray Findley was suddenly being so forceful. At home time, the head teacher popped his head round her classroom door.

‘Can I have a word, Liz?’

‘Certainly, Mr Findley,’ Liz said pointedly. She was a stickler for formality in the classroom. She followed him into his office.

‘Liz, take a seat. I’ve been thinking about making a few changes as Sheila will be coming back in September. I’ll have to consult with the authorities – it’s always worth having a second opinion especially where a husband and wife are involved, but I wanted to ask you to do me a favour.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Liz smiled smoothly, belying the panic she felt.

‘Good. You’ve taught Year Five for several years, haven’t you?’

‘Since the year you came to work at St Mungo’s, Ray. Twelve years ago.’ 

‘So how about a change? I’d like you to let Sheila take Year Five next year. It would be a less stressful return to school life for her. And Alison MacDonald has done well with Year Six, but it’s a big responsibility. I thought maybe she could have a change next year and take Brenda’s old year, Year Four.’ He paused. ‘So could you take on the big job next year, Liz? Year Six?’

Liz felt winded. Year Six, the worst year in the school. Controversial tests. End of Year celebrations. Issues over secondary schools. This is a ploy by Ray and Sheila Findley to get me out, she thought. He doesn’t really want me teaching Year Six. It’s a win-win for him. If I say yes, then it means he has forced me out of my rut. If I say no, he has a valid reason for challenging me.

‘But that would mean teaching the same children two years running….’

‘Not a problem. In fact after the terrible events of this year a little stability might be good for next year’s top class.’

‘Well, Ray, I’m very surprised. And won’t Alison MacDonald be moving down to Manchester? She’s getting married, you know.’

‘I gather she wishes to stay at St Mungo’s.’

Liz swallowed. ‘But she’s done very well with Year Six. She should stay there. I knew she’d be good when I chose her.’

‘Yes, you showed great judgement there.’ Ray Findley smiled at her as if he knew exactly why she had picked Alison. ‘But she can still teach art across the whole school. And if she does want to stay with Year Six, maybe you’d be interested in some other role? Something a little more challenging? Anyway, all this is just a thought. But I do want you to consider Year Six. Have a think about it yourself, and let me know how you feel. On Monday perhaps?’

Liz had walked out of his office like an automaton. She felt detached, as if she was floating dreamlike through her normal motions, but her mind was reeling. Year Six? They were always terrible to teach. She thought of the little detonators she always planted during her teaching of Year Five – the nudges to parents to make a fuss about secondary school, the tiny remarks she made to the children to destabilize or over-stimulate them, so that there were
problems
in store for the Year Six teacher. Now she would be inheriting her own time bombs.

What was going on? She had set two people off on missions to keep Ray Findley preoccupied and running scared; neither had worked. Peter Hodgson was a washout. But there had always been plenty of fight in Callie McFadden. And where was Callie? Usually, when there was change afoot, Callie scented it and was to be found lurking, waiting for scraps of gossip. But she had gone home.

Except she wasn’t going home, was she? She had said on the phone the night before that she was going to Faye Armistead’s. Faye could be a tough cookie in her effete upper-class way, Liz thought. Maybe she could be useful 
now. If Callie was going to let her down, perhaps Faye might be enlisted? She could be encouraged to set up a petition against the concert, or to issue a formal complaint against Alison MacDonald for favouring Becky Dixon. Faye might be a very useful ally.

Liz marched to her little red car, opened the door, and sat at the wheel. Instead of turning out of the school car park towards High Pelliter, she set off towards the Armisteads’.

Becky and Molly were still at school, working on the mural. Except that they weren’t. Miss MacDonald had left them and gone to make a cup of hot coffee. School was cold. The change in the weather seemed to be seeping through to everyone’s bones. Becky and Molly were huddled together, sitting on the floor below the picture.

‘What should we do about the police?’ Molly asked.

‘We should do nothing,’ Becky said. ‘Anyway it was all my fault in the first place. I made you go out on the bike. You were all for staying at home.’

‘They don’t know it was us, do they?’

‘No. They think it was a boy and a girl because you were riding Jake’s bike. And don’t worry, Molly, no one knows that we saw Jonty at the Marshes and we’ll never tell.’

Molly had begun to cry softly. Becky put her arm around her. ‘Please don’t cry, Molly. I swear I won’t let him harm you.’

And I won’t, she thought. Whatever she had to go through herself, she wouldn’t let Jonty McFadden touch Molly.

L
iz Rudder drove quickly and efficiently to Pelliter farm, carving up a school bus and a tractor with satisfaction. Her car hissed around on the gravel sweep in front of the gracious Georgian farmhouse, painted a pale dove grey with white facings and decorated with an elegant porch. Callie’s old banger was already there. Faye opened the door to Liz with a surprised look which stretched her elegant arched eyebrows even higher.

Liz said, ‘Hello, Faye. I know Callie’s here. I do hope you don’t mind me joining you. I wanted to see Callie, and it might be very convenient for me to speak to you as well. May I come in?’ She was already across the threshold and moving towards the farmhouse kitchen with the air of a small, plump terrier.

Callie was sitting at the kitchen table, looking pale. A very pretty china
tea-set
was in front of her. Even in her annoyance, Liz Rudder noticed how tasteful it all was. The thought calmed her slightly. Faye Armistead might seem a little bit affected, but she did have class. It was surprisingly reassuring.

‘I’d love a cup of Earl Grey,’ Liz said, although no tea had been offered, and she sank down on to the hard but satisfyingly large kitchen chairs. ‘Callie, I’ve come here because I need to speak to you. Actually it’s worked out very well, because Faye might be able to help too. I presume I can speak in front of Faye, even though she may not be quite aware of everything?’

‘Oh she’s aware all right,’ Callie said, and laughed darkly. ‘She knows all about Jonty’s dad. In fact, she knows the truth.’

‘The truth? What on earth do you mean?’ Liz said, and for the first time she felt the prickle of panic.

‘Liz.’ Faye came up behind her and put her beautifully manicured hand on Liz’s shoulder. ‘Maybe we should all three of us have had this heart-to-heart a long time ago. It really is quite fortuitous that you’ve turned up.’

Callie growled at Faye from across the table, ‘If you tell her, everything is going to be out of the bag.’ 

‘Yes,’ Faye purred. ‘But really, Callie, that would probably be a good thing. And the fact that we have to come clean is all thanks to Brenda! How odd that we thought we were pulling her strings, but she was pulling ours!’

‘Don’t trust Brenda, that’s what the ouija board said,’ Callie muttered.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ Liz Rudder felt as if the classroom was out of control. ‘What are you both talking about? What on earth has anything got to do with Brenda any more?’

‘Because Brenda knew everything. We’re talking about your husband,’ Callie hissed. ‘John Lover-boy Rudder who couldn’t get enough at home.’

Faye sat down gently beside Liz and held her arm, as if to comfort her.

‘What do you mean?’ Liz said. Her voice sounded astonishingly like a whimper.

‘John Rudder, whom Callie and I knew very, very well …’ Faye leant forward confidentially, her dark eyes full of mocking sympathy. ‘John Rudder was the father of our both our boys. Jonty and Tobias. It must be an awful shock for you. But didn’t you always suspect it? That black curly hair…?’

‘What?’ Liz was white and shaking now. The empty teacup she had
imperiously
commandeered only minutes before rattled in its saucer. ‘But Callie – it was Ray Findley.’

‘No,’ Callie said. ‘Of course it wasn’t. Mr Nice Guy Findley was far too respectable to want a shag in the back of his car. I let you think that, though. I was frightened you’d take one look at Jonty and know he was your own husband’s boy, but you were so full of your own importance that you couldn’t see what was in front of your eyes. You thought, because you’d seen me in the car with Ray Findley, that he was Jonty’s dad. Well, you were wrong. It was your own man. You were the one who sent him my way. With financial advice,’ she sneered.

Faye laughed her tinkling laugh. ‘And he’s also Toby’s father. Probably. Amazing, isn’t it? John was our financial adviser too, at the time. The farm was going to rack and ruin under Roger’s management. John came here almost every day. We spent a lot of time together.’ Faye laughed brightly. ‘John was a sweetie, really. I felt sorry for him. It was a pity his marriage was just a sham.’

Liz put her head in her hands.

‘The funny thing is,’ Faye said, in rather a musing voice, ‘neither Callie nor I had any idea about each other, or that our boys might be half brothers. Until Brenda told us. Fancy that!’ Faye laughed again, and the cut glass on the shelf of the dresser vibrated.

‘Brenda?’ Liz looked up. Her eyes were dazed and her breath came in little rasps. ‘How would she know all this?’

‘We don’t know. But she was right,’ Callie growled. ‘She got us together 
and she told us. After that we had to put up with her on a Saturday morning. Why do you think we were so friendly with the old bag? Charity?’

Faye laughed. ‘I think Brenda told us John’s secrets because she needed friends. You’d dumped her, after all, so she decided to put a wee bit of
pressure
on us to be her pals and we obliged. Of course, we have no idea how she knew about our little flings with your husband, but she was right.’

Liz was swaying with shock. ‘Toby and Jonty. I had no idea. But Brenda should have told me,’ she said, almost pleading.

Callie laughed harshly. ‘Why should she? After John’s stroke you ditched her. She had a grudge against you.’

‘But I was always her closest friend!’ Liz cried. She yelped like an animal in pain. Then she put her head back on the chair and closed her eyes. The other two women exchanged glances and waited until Liz Rudder opened them wide again.

‘Now,’ Faye said managerially, ‘I’m sure you don’t want the Child Support Agency, or anything like that, involved, Liz, and neither do we. I think all this could be resolved very happily if you agree to pay school fees for both boys. At some point you will have to sell your big house and buy a little flat in Norbridge. If you get one that’s small enough, you should have enough money left for a basic nursing home for John, and school fees for his sons as well.’

Liz Rudder’s eyes were glassy. She got up from the table and knocked the bone china cup on the floor, where it cracked. Then she turned and walked out. The other two women heard her feet on the parquet, then the front door of the farmhouse opening and, after a few seconds, the sound of a car screeching away.

‘We just need to give her time to think, and then I’m sure things will turn out very well.’ Faye Armistead smiled like a cat. ‘More tea, Callie?’

John Rudder’s carers had left for the evening. It had been a day of unusual clarity for him, so this was probably his final chance to write the document again now Brenda was gone and the original had disappeared. He knew he was weaker, and he could calculate for himself how many of his pills Liz was putting down the toilet. His medication now was virtually nil.

John had been pushed into his little bedroom and undressed, although it was early evening. Liz sometimes let him stay in the lounge, but more often she asked the carers to take him to his room.

‘Poor John gets so tired,’ she would say, so she could have him bundled out of the way.

If John had ever given Liz the benefit of the doubt before, he knew now how vicious she could be. What an idiot he had been. When he had first 
suspected she had deceived him over the failure to have kids, he had taken revenge by seducing every woman he could. As a financial adviser he met lots of women and visited them in their homes. Some had useless husbands who had made a mess of the family finances. Others were divorced or separated. But the last one had been different. She had been a student, introduced to him by his arty stepbrother who’d been living in a student house not far away. ‘Even Bohemians need financial advice,’ he’d joked, and John had gone round prepared to be contemptuous and a bit disgusted by their alternative lifestyle. But instead he had been wowed by the talk and the artwork and the
excitement
. And he had fallen head over heels in love. It had been so very different from his life with Liz.

He should have left Liz there and then, but he had dragged his feet. And in the end the girl he loved, and his kid brother, had gone away. He suspected he had broken her heart, but young hearts heal quickly and his own smashed life had never been put together again.

Until the emails from his brother had started coming in, and given him the most bittersweet moment of his life. For a few months he had cherished the idea of trying to put things right again. He would leave Liz, and find the only person left who really mattered to him. The daughter he had never seen. But when he had told Liz he was leaving, the rows had led to his stroke.

And here she was now, his torturer and guard. He could hear her car coming up the drive in the sort of fast aggressive spurts he associated with Liz in a bad mood. He would be in for another ghastly evening with nothing accomplished.

Liz Rudder arrived home with no idea of how she had got there. It was only six o’clock. Her husband was supposed to be tucked up in his little bedroom, but when she stormed in there he was sitting at his desk, a horrible parody of what he had been.

‘I know it all, John,’ Liz said. She went behind the wheelchair and tipped it up. John Rudder smashed forward into the table and crashed on to the floor.

‘I’m not going to keep you alive any more. I want you dead before those harpies can prove anything. I’ve had enough. I know all about your two little bastards.’

John Rudder could hardly speak. He was lying face down on the carpet, his back twisted and in pain and his good arm broken underneath him. But he could still feel some triumph.

‘Three!’ he managed to shout in his mangled voice. ‘Three!’ But Liz had no comprehension of what he was trying to say. She was lifting the Anglepoise lamp to bring it down on his head. Then she heard the front door opening and her brother’s cheery voice. 

‘Hi Sis!’ Kevin called. ‘Just a surprise visit. Oh my goodness, what’s happened here?’

Ro woke on Friday to an even worse day. The bedroom felt dark, and when the radio alarm went off she lay in bed, waiting for the weather forecast. It was still unseasonably cold owing to a weather system moving in from the east. She thought of the wind blowing across the steppes, down through Scandinavia and over the North Sea to Cumbria where it met the warmth of the Atlantic, provoking storms to follow. It was tempting to stay in bed, but she was booked in to attend a meeting of Norbridge market-traders complaining about new traffic regulations. She went through the usual routine with Ben, who moaned and groaned a bit more than usual.

‘What are we doing this weekend, Mum?’

‘I thought we could stay at home after all the recent socializing. I’ve got washing to do.’

‘No friends coming round? No parties?’

‘Well, that’s not what we normally do, is it? On Sunday we’ll probably go to Grandma and Grandad’s.’

‘What about Becky and Molly, and Jake?’

‘I think we’ve got to be careful of overdoing it with people. Outstaying our welcome.’

‘You always say that,’ Ben said moodily, picking up his backpack for school. She saw him get into his taxi, and then followed him out of the house.

That morning the market traders’ meeting was crabby and aggressive. When they arrived back at the police station, Ro felt an air of unfocused tension.

‘PCSO Watson?’ Sergeant Liddle said. ‘Can you come here?’

Jed was sitting in front of the sergeant’s desk, his long legs stuck out in front of him. Unusually, there was another chair waiting. Sergeant Liddle motioned Ro into it.

‘This is a difficult one,’ Sergeant Liddle was saying as she sat down. ‘The lady concerned was absolutely hysterical in the circumstances. But she was vociferous in her complaint when she telephoned me.’

‘Sorry?’ Ro looked first at the sergeant, then at Jed.

‘John Rudder is very ill,’ Jed said. ‘Liz Rudder went out just for a few hours yesterday evening and when she came back he had fallen out of his chair and hit his head. Liz Rudder is in a terrible state too, apparently. John’s in the Coast Hospital.’

‘Will he survive?’

‘Fifty-fifty.’

Ro started to think more clearly. ‘You mentioned a complaint?’ 

‘Yes, I’m afraid Mrs Rudder is going to make an official complaint, about you harassing her and her husband. I know it’s probably just displacement activity on her part, but we need to take any complaint seriously.’

‘But that’s crazy. We played by the book, didn’t we, Jed?’

‘Yes.’ Jed looked at her and then at the sergeant. ‘If anyone gets it wrong Sarge, it’s me. Ro is always great with people. There’s no way she could have upset Mrs Rudder.’

Ro smiled at him gratefully. But Sergeant Liddle said, ‘As far as I can see, you played by the book, PC Jackson. But you didn’t, did you, Ro? You phoned Mrs Rudder late at night asking more questions. That’s not what a PCSO does.’

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. It was just a very mild enquiry, really just like a
neighbourly
thing to do.’

‘That’s not how she sees it. And it’s not how I see it either. I think you should go home for today, till we find out how this complaint squares up. And, Jed, you leave this Canadian connection alone for the time being. It’s causing more trouble than it’s worth.’

Ro felt her scar burning and her face was flushed. It was mortifying having to leave the office. It was clear no one wanted to associate with someone in disgrace. Except Jed.

He whispered, ‘The sergeant’ll get over it, Ro. Mrs Rudder’s always been a bit of a cow. She always picked on the weak kids.’

‘I’m not weak, Jed.’

‘No, you’re not. Maybe that’s why she’s complained about you.’

‘Or maybe she’s got something to hide?’

‘But what? If the dead man was called Rudder it could be a coincidence. Or he could have been here without her knowing. He’s not alive to tell us, is he?’